Space, Crossovers, and a Healthy Dose of Magic
by phoenixyfriend
Summary: "We know not why we are here. We know not how to get home. We know not how to survive one another. However, there is one thing we do know: we shall surely kick some-" "Hey, watch it! There are kids here!" (Also contains content from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agent of Asgard, Runaways, and Attack on Titan.)
1. Purple is Dangerous

**A/N: This takes place, timeline-wise:**

**616: post-Original Sin, pre-AXIS, post-L.A. Women, pre-Hawkeye vs. Deadpool, post-YA 2, pre-Avengers World #16 **

**MCU: post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron**

**Firefly: post-Serenity, pre-comics**

**SnK: this information is currently irrelevant**

o.o.o.o.o

**Earth-616**

It started during the twins' birthday party, really. They'd invited all the living Young Avengers, both current and former, that they could reach.

This did not include Nate.

(Nate had been _persona non grata_ since Cassie and Jonas.)

It did, however, include Loki, who had been rather confused, but had come anyway under the condition that one Verity Willis could also come.

"Why do you need me there?"

"Meat shield."

"Loki."

"I'm not sure why they're asking me over for something so benign after I nearly got them all killed with my schemes, so if I bring a human, they're less likely to attack me, because you're fragile."

"That's not the whole truth, and we _both_ know it."

"Oh, wow, would you look at that? We're here."

Well, Verity could amuse herself with watching Loki and all the kids, even if there probably wouldn't be alcohol… or even anyone near her age, really. The eldest they had was…

"Hawkeye. The girl one. Kate. She's twenty-one."

"Not too bad."

"You'd honestly probably be better off talking to David, though. He can speak your language."

"Sarcasm, wine, and nothing but the truth?"

"Actually, I was going to say math and physics, but the others are all true too."

"He's the one with the know-it-all powers, right?"

"Yep."

The door slammed open, revealing a head of white hair, hazy blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and a noticeably bare chest. Verity caught a faint whiff of alcohol, and decided that maybe the party wouldn't be that bad after all.

(It wasn't so much that alcohol was _necessary_ for a good party, but around people that were, at the very least, three years younger than her, it would be helpful.)

"Yo, you made it!"

"Er… hello, Tommy." Loki looked rather uncomfortable, really. "I was under the impression that Billy was the one to invite me."

"Yeah, but he's busy trying to talk Noh-Varr down from playing weirdo sixties music all night." Tommy shook his head, leaning against the door. "He's a good DJ but his tastes are older than… shit, I can't say my grandpa, 'cause Magneto's, like… _old_."

"Indeed." Loki said stiffly, and Verity glanced over to catch sight of restless fingers rubbing over Gram's hilt. "I don't suppose you're going to let us in?"

_Because this is making you uncomfortable and you really want to leave but you also want to stay and I'm pretty much the only reason you're not a nervous mess around these people, aren't I?_ Verity watched the proceedings without saying anything. Loki had told her about how he'd messed things up with these kids—

("They gave me a chance, and I earned their trust after I'd already betrayed them, and I never told them until it was too late. I nearly got them all killed because I was a selfish _bastard_, and I wouldn't be surprised if they never forgave me. Everything else I've ever done, especially in this second life, I could blame at least a little on someone else. Every other destroyed relationship, I could cast the blame somewhere else, but this… I screwed this up on my own."

"I thought half the problem was that you felt so guilty about it that your hallucinations were coming to life? That doesn't exactly sound like your fault. You didn't imagine up that 'league of evil exes' on purpose."

"That doesn't change the fact that I made the deal with Mother in the first place."

"So you're just avoiding them?"

"Why not? They already hate me. At least this way, I don't have to bother them anymore."

"You still care for them."

"More than I should. Why do you think I'm avoiding them?")

Verity hadn't needed to look at the blood dripping from the hand that Loki had clenched around Gram's blade, didn't even need her powers, to know how painfully truthful those words were.

"Yeah, I guess I should." Tommy pushed himself off the doorframe, but didn't move out of the doorway, just looking Loki up and down with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"…What?"

"You have boobs." Tommy said, and Verity almost laughed despite herself, because that tone was just that perfect balance between confused and I-don't-even-care-anymore-just-don't-drip-blood-on-the-carpet that anyone even vaguely involved in the superhero business perfected eventually.

"I… yes? Yes, I have breasts at the moment." Loki paused, and then, "Is that a problem?"

"…You're not pretending to be my mom again, right?"

"Not in the slightest." Loki made a face. "I'm not one for repeat performances."

"That Sif lady?"

"No, Shepherd; as you can see, I am quite clearly myself."

"But you're a chick."

"I fail to see the problem."

Verity hid a smile behind her hand, watching as Loki dealt with the clearly inebriated mutant boy. She supposed it was lucky that it was the Young Avenger Loki had had the least amount of interaction with, barring Patriot or whatever the kid's name was. As it was, Verity doubted the kid was _trying_ to be obtuse or bigoted… he was just really, really drunk.

"Tommy!"

And that, Verity guessed, was Kate Bishop, if the copious amounts of purple and scarily movie-esque contrast between hair and skin were anything to go by (Verity suddenly understood what Loki had meant while complaining about all the villains comparing the poor girl to a porcelain doll).

"Tommy, what's taking so… oh. Hey, Loki." Awkward, but not overly nervous or judging. Good. Verity liked her. Kate's eyes drifted down and back up, eyebrow quirked. "Should I ask about…?" She gestured vaguely at her own chest, sending a pointed stare at Loki's.

"Your boyfriend's been asking enough about those already." Verity finally spoke, arms crossed and leaning against the door, having resigned herself to the fact that she likely wasn't going to be getting in any time soon. Might as well join in on the fun, right?

"Not my boyfriend." Kate immediately said, though there was a weird vibe to her words that Verity placed as… not a lie, but definitely not the truth either. Denial, probably. She couldn't guess the situation more accurately without knowing a bit more backstory. "But I'll deal with his messes for now. What did he do?"

"Ask if I was impersonating the Scarlet Witch or Sif. Again." Loki shifted from foot to foot almost nervously.

Kate sighed, bringing a hand to her forehead. She seemed more exasperated by Tommy than anything else, though, so maybe this was what counted for normal for a drunk Tommy. "So… should I assume this is going to be a regular thing from now on? Permanent? What?"

"I…" Loki hesitated for half a second, just enough for Verity to note the surprise on her face, and then bulldozed on. "Regular, yes, permanent, no. It really all depends on how I feel on the day in question."

"Right." Kate poked Tommy in the shoulder, who seemed to be sobering up somewhat (that speedster metabolism, Verity guessed). "Remember Xavin? Sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy? Loki's a bit like that."

"But Loki's not a Skrull." Tommy said, and for the life of her, Verity couldn't tell if he was being deliberately dense at this point or legitimately that plastered.

"Skrulls are _not_ the only shapeshifters in the realms, and one does not need to be a shapeshifter to experience changes in one's gender." Loki spoke almost stiffly, but that might have just been the lingering anxiety.

"…Yeah, okay." Tommy shrugged and turned around sauntering back into the party, weaving slightly. The three left in the doorway watched him go with varying levels of amusement.

Loki tilted her head. "He's completely hammered, isn't he?"

"Yeah, probably. Sorry about all that, he's not usually that bad, not about that sort of thing." Kate shook her head, looking back out at them. She held out a hand to Verity, smiling. "Hey. Kate Bishop, also known as Hawkeye."

"I'd guessed." Verity shook Kate's hand and gestured at Loki with her head. "She talks about you guys enough."

Loki looked studiously not-guilty.

Kate just snorted. "Yeah, okay. Anyway, we were just about to start karaoke, and I think everyone's hoping that the god of _never answering the damn phone_ here might be willing to join in and make a fool of… _her_self," the word was deliberate, as though Kate had needed to stop and correct herself, "with the rest of us. You in, new girl?"

Verity glanced at Loki, who seemed to be calmer than before (if more confused), and shrugged. "I'm in if Loki is."

"Great."

o.o.o.o.o

"Hey, hey, hey, tattoo girl!" Tommy skidded to an unsteady stop in front of Verity, cheeks still liquor-flushed. "Have you ever been to space?"

"…No…" Verity drew the word out slowly, and saw her current conversation partner, a certain Miss America, snort and cross her arms. Loki was lurking around somewhere, trying to figure out why the only person that had try to call her out on anything so far was Eli (who was… eh, Verity didn't care where he was), and just altogether being a strange little hipster. Last Verity had seen her, she'd been dragged into some conversation about how country had been devolving over the past few decades with Noh-Varr, visibly uncomfortable but _trying_ to get involved in the party after the karaoke had failed to provide any positive results.

"Great!" Tony spun around and cupped his hands around his mouth. "OI! EVERYBODY PILE INTO NOH'S SHIP! NEW GIRL'S NEVER BEEN TO SPACE, SO SOMEBODY SOBER TAKE THE WHEEL AND GET US ALL UP THERE!"

Verity stood, frozen, and stared at Tommy. This was a bad idea. There couldn't possibly be anyone left that was good to drive. She turned to look at America, wide-eyed. "This is a terrible idea."

"It may not be the multiverse, but maybe it's time to broaden your horizons, eh?" The corner of America's lip pulled up into a half-grin. "You don't have to go if you don't want to, tattoo-girl."

"Nobody's sober enough for this." Verity complained, though she wasn't completely opposed to the idea.

"Actually," Kate popped into the conversation, grabbing her jacket from the chair next to Verity. It seemed like everyone was getting ready. "Noh-Varr's got some stuff in his blood that keeps him sober. Nanites, I think? Or maybe it's just that he's Kree? I don't really know, but I don't think he can get drunk off the stuff we've got on Earth unless he tries antifreeze or something. Plus, David and Teddy are designated drivers for the normal cars. They can't fly the ship, though."

Verity quashed some of her fears, catching Loki's eye as the goddess sidled up next to her, wearing a grin for the first time that night. "Oh, Verity. This is one thing you should trust them on; space really is fun."

"Right." Verity muttered, not bothering to push Loki off as the goddess slipped an arm into the crook of Verity's elbow. "I can't back out?"

"I can't imagine why you _would_." Loki said, though it was clearly a lie, and both of them knew it. "I lived on the ship long enough to know that it's safe, even if I'm not overly fond of Kirby engines. Unless you have some kind of motion sickness…?"

"No. I'm just… not very used to that sort of thing." _Space_. She'd never expected to be going up in an alien spaceship. Maybe if she'd been more interested in astrophysics instead of the theoretical stuff, she'd have tried for NASA or SWORD and maybe hoped for it that way, but…

"If you feel uncomfortable, I could try to talk them out of it." Loki offered.

"No. Let's… let's do this."

o.o.o.o.o

"Holy _shit_." Verity breathed out, looking out the windows. She'd seen pictures in books over the years, dozens of them, but… this was just incredible.

"I told you you'd like it." Loki smirked, arms crossed and leaning against the wall next to the window. She was staring out as well, and after a few seconds, her expression softened into something almost fond. "All those people, going about their lives, and none of them realize just how insignificant they are to the universe. It's almost inspiring."

"And you're significant, then?"

"Indisputably." Loki answered with false bravado, and Verity could feel the stares of the Young Avengers on them. "In all fairness, I _am_ one of the major players in the destiny of the multiverse in most realities, and this one is no different. I'm not the most important, certainly, but I'm a little more significant than those below. Not by much, no, not unless I truly try, but there are few in the multiverse that can affect destiny and fate to the point of being considered significant."

"Yeah, okay." Verity still hadn't looked away from the window. The next question was directed at whatever Young Avengers were still in the room. "How far out are we?"

"We're about fifteen thousand miles from the Earth's surface." One of them answered; David, she thought.

"Almost five radii from the center, then." Verity muttered. The earth was a little under eight thousand miles across, so the radius was about four thousand, and if they were about nineteen thousand miles from the center… yeah, that was about right.

Loki snorted, amused, but whatever she'd been about to say was cut off as she suddenly gasped, knees buckling and forcing her to use the wall to keep herself upright. On the other side of the cabin, one of the twins (Billy, right?) was experiencing something similar.

"Loki?" Verity tried not to worry (she'd seen the goddess covered in blood at least once, so she was getting used to dealing with Loki's messes).

"There's something… something wrong." Loki's eyes flickered around the room, breath shallow. "Magic, heavy and completely unfamiliar."

Verity felt like someone had poured ice into her veins. Yep, _this_ was what she got for hanging out with supers.

"It's a transportation spell? I think?" Billy had gotten back to his feet, but was leaning heavily on Teddy. "I'm not sure. It's not chaos magic, though."

"Transportation, yes. Not chaos, no. It's…" Loki's face screwed up in concentration. "Something a lot more primal. Older. Not something any of us want to mess with."

Kate's voice came on over the PA system. "Uh, guys? Anyone wanna tell me what the ship is glowing purple? Not that I mind the color choice, but it's kind of worrying."

Billy and Loki's eyes locked.

"Please tell me you know what's going on and how to fix it, because I don't think pulling a Demiurge here is going to work."

"I'd need time, and that's something we don't have." Loki shook her head. "I don't work as instantaneously as you do."

"Right." Billy swallowed. "I'll just assume this isn't your doing, and try to keep us here?"

"We've got about a minute and a half left before this thing reaches peak capacity. You can try."

_"**I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to stay here, I want us to—**_"

It didn't work.

o.o.o.o.o

**Earth-199999**

"Well, that was a disaster." Tony commented, leaning back against the inner wall of the SHIELD quinjet that the team was in. "Not that I'm all that surprised about finding HYDRA in the CIA."

"Shut up, Stark." Clint commented, though there wasn't any vitriol in the words. He was the one piloting them, and was the reason that they'd even managed to get ahold of a quinjet in the first place; most of them had been either destroyed or hijacked by HYDRA after the fall of the Triskelion. "We got the mission done."

"With more collateral damage than I'm comfortable with." Steve sent Clint a reproachful look. "We should have called in backup."

"Rhodey was busy in 'nam, and your friend's wings aren't done yet." Tony tilted his head. "Barnes is still off the radar, and it would have taken too long to get Thor's friends down here. Anyone else?"

"Nah. Bobbi's undercover, and she's pretty much the only living member of SHIELD that I'd trust _and_ that could have helped." Clint tossed in.

"Oh?" Natasha's voice, exhausted as she sounded, was still vaguely teasing.

"You don't count, 'Tasha. You were already there." Clint grinned up at her, though his eyes didn't leave the path, even if they _were_ flying over nothing but empty ocean. "Bobbi's off doing… whatever it is she's doing, and you were fighting HYDRA goons."

Whatever response Natasha had planned was interrupted by the sudden purple glow that infused the craft. No one said anything, tensely waiting for someone else to make the first move.

"…Stark?" Steve's voice was quiet, but it was authoritative and it carried.

"Nothing I've got experience with, but I'm having JARVIS run some scans." Tony's voice was muffled again, once more hidden behind the suit's helmet. "Thor?"

"Magic, but none I have experience with." The god shook his head, knuckles white from how hard he gripped Mjolnir.

"Can you get rid of it?" Clint asked, preempting any other question. It made sense, really; of all their experiences with magic, his had been the worst.

"No, I cannot." Despite his words, there was electricity sparking across Thor's skin. Behind him, Bruce was looking a little too deliberately calm, and the nervous looks that people kept shooting him weren't helping.

"Any precautions we can take?" Steve asked, eyeing the spies in the pilots' seats.

"The newer quinjet models can be sealed off and go underwater or through poisoned air without endangering passengers; I'm doing that now in case we go down." Clint flicked a few switches, and the sound of hissing filled the craft. "That happens, we've got enough air for at least three hours, including the air tanks. We can probably break out if we_ do_ go down, but…"

"Emergency measures. There any lifejackets on this thing?" Steve wasn't exactly the best at contingency plans, but he was better than most.

"Under the seats, same as most planes."

Natasha was the one to notice how uncharacteristically quiet a certain member of the crew was being. "Stark? How are you holding up?"

"I don't do well with water." Despite the deadpan tone, Natasha could practically _feel_ the anxiety radiating off of Tony, and it wasn't hard to guess why. With the water torture in Afghanistan and the near-drowning after the Mandarin had bombed the Malibu mansion, Stark's list of water-related traumas only seemed to be growing. "Besides, if I talk, I might annoy Bruce, and nobody wants to do that."

Natasha took the deflection for what it was. "Dr. Banner? What about you?"

"Hoping we don't go down." Bruce shivered, though the green was thankfully still absent. "That wouldn't end well for everyone."

"Well, let's see to—"

They disappeared.

o.o.o.o.o

**Unknown Dimension**

"Well…" Teddy leaned against the window, one of the only people still standing. "We're still in space."

The entire crew was together in the main room, most of them sitting in the passenger seats with Noh-Varr at the controls. Kate was in the co-pilot's seat, but she, at least, had swiveled the chair around to look at the rest of them as they tried to figure out what to do next.

"Different space." Loki's eyes locked with America's, who nodded. "Different dimension, different part of the universe. We're at least a couple weeks out from this dimension's Earth, possibly months, if Earth even exists."

"The Marvel's a fast ship." Noh-Varr reminded him. "It may not take that long."

Loki shook her head. "At the very least, we're in a different star system. The Marvel may be fast, but last I heard, the warp drive was shattered."

Noh-Varr's lips thinned, clearly unhappy with the reminder.

"So we look for Earth specifically?" Kate tilted her head, propped up by one hand, cheek squashed. "Or do we hunt down some Skrulls or Kree or Asgardians or something?"

"There are a lot of stories in the multiverse," Loki muttered, aware of the eyes on her; she was one of the two people on the ship that could reliably take herself from one dimension to another, after all, and she had more experience with this sort of thing than all the others combined, if the memories of Loki-that-burned were taken into account. "But many of them, more than should be possible, lead back to Earth."

"We find Earth, we find out what happened, is what you're trying to say." David said, fingers tapping on the table in a staccato tattoo. "I'd say that Asgard's a more reliable source of information, though."

"She's gone bad in a good ninety-percent of the worlds I've seen." America jerked a thumb at Loki and shook her head. Verity squeezed Loki's shoulder in silent support. "Asgardians see her, we lose any help we might've gotten. Not a chance."

"I don't get the feeling that Asgard… _exists_ here." Loki shivered. "Or rather, it existed, but has decayed into nothing but dead time. Whether they would have helped or not, I don't think they'd be able to."

"You can sense other Asgardians?" Eli demanded. "And you're saying there isn't a single other one in whatever this dimension is?"

"Correction." Loki made a face. "I can sense _Asgard_. Or Asgardia, in some of them. Asgardians themselves are a little more difficult."

"What about other versions of yourself? Is that a thing?" Tommy was out of his seat again, bouncing from foot to foot in an attempt not to start zipping around the confined area. "Is that a thing you can do?"

"I…" Loki shook her head. "Sometimes. However, I _am_ a trickster, in almost any universe. I'm good at hiding, even from myself."

"Question." Billy raised a hand as though in class. "Why can't we use America's portals to get home? Other than that The Marvel can't fit through, I mean."

"They aren't working." America admitted after all the eyes in the room turned to her. "Can't do jack."

"And The Marvel lost its dimension-jumping abilities when Plex's mind was destroyed." The amount of anger, bitterness, and grief in Noh-Varr's tone was enough for Kate to put a hand on his shoulder in comfort; she rarely did that anymore, not since the incident with the fake Oubliette.

"So not only did something bring us here, but it's also preventing us from getting home." Kate pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Does anyone have any idea how we can at least start figuring out how to get home? Or where we are?"

Loki glanced at Billy, David, and America in turn: power, knowledge, and skill, all of which would be needed if they wanted to go dimension-jumping now. "I may have an idea, but it's going to require some blood."

The glares that landed on her were almost amusingly good at forcing her to backtrack and change her words. "Or jam? Jam works too. Not as well, but it does. I was going to use my own blood, but jam works."

"Stick to the jam, Loki."

o.o.o.o.o

**Two hours later:**

"_Hello, this is your captain speaking. We may have a small situation up here._" Kate's voice sounded almost cheerful over the PA system. Loki glanced up at the ceiling, then around at the other people in the room. In addition to Billy and David, who were there in their capacity of either having a lot of magic or knowing a lot of magic, Verity had stuck around as well, while Tommy doing supply runs for jam and whatever else they needed when necessary. America, Eli, and Teddy had been stuck with the unfortunate duty of cataloguing whatever food and other inventory was on board the ship so that they'd know how much supplies they had before there was a chance they'd run out. Kate and Noh-Varr were out doing piloting stuff and trying to use the stars to figure out where they were.

"_It's my ship, Kate. That means I'm the captain._"

"_No, you're the pilot and the ship's owner. I'm captain of the team, so as long as this is considered a team ship in any way, I'm the captain._"

"_But—_"

"_We can talk about this later, Noh. Anyway! There's a ship showing up on the radar, maybe three miles out. We can't really see it yet, because space is dark and the ship is probably black or something, but we're about to make contact with them to see if they can provide any information. If you have any objections, now might be the time to make them._"

Loki walked over to the crude intercom on the wall (crude because it had been installed years after the ship had been built, because before that, psychic links had done the dirty work), and pressed the button. "Give them as few details as you can about the people on the ship, and don't mention my name at all. If it seems like a version of someone we know, no matter what the dimension, a mass text would probably be a good idea."

"_I was planning on most of that anyway, so sure thing. I'll also just assume that either you or The Marvel is the reason any of us even have a signal._" Kate answered, a smirk in her voice. "_I'll be broadcasting the conversation, but if you want to come up to the main room, you're welcome to._"

Verity looked over at the magic-users and waved. "I'll go see what's going on. It would be nice for the captain to know if whoever we're talking to is lying, right?"

"Take David with you." Billy said, and then shrugged when people looked at him in askance. "What? We can handle the next part without you, and having a genius up front may be a good idea."

"I'll see what I can do." David gave a small wave as he and Verity left the room.

"Who do you think it is?" Billy asked, as though the answer would change anything.

"With our luck?" Loki snorted. "My brother."

o.o.o.o.o

"Hello, this is Kate Bishop, captain of The Marvel." Kate spoke into the microphone as steadily as she could, once she was sure that everyone that wanted to be present had arrived (more than half the team, really: her, Noh, Eli, Teddy, Verity, and David). "Please report your origin and intentions."

"Oh, hell, we finally got someone." And oh, wasn't _that_ voice familiar, if a little gravellier than she was used to. Kate shot Noh-Varr a look, but didn't give any verbal sign of recognition; clearly, she didn't exist wherever these people came from, or at least wasn't as big a name yet. "This is Clint Barton, SHIELD agent and currently the pilot of this quinjet here. Said quinjet doesn't have a name because she's not meant to be out in space. We're from Earth, have no idea what we're doing out here other than some weird glowy purple magic, and I wouldn't be giving out this much information, but we've got about an hour and a half worth of air left and even that's questionable, so I'm kind of hoping we'll get some help from your end."

Kate paled, and glanced over at Verity, who nodded.

"...Our vessel is fully equipped with oxygen-producing life support systems, and we're willing to let you board so long as you harbor no ill will or violent intentions towards any of the inhabitants." Kate said as officially as she could. Noh-Varr was nodding out of the corner of her eye, and that, at least, made her calm down a bit. Even if Noh had messed up on Earth, he _had_ been a diplomat-in-training, and if he approved of her wording, then that meant she was doing well. "Do we have your word?"

And then she heard a voice that, even if it was a teensy bit off, could only be Captain America. "We promise not to harm any of your crew unless attacked first, and harbor no ill will towards anyone aboard."

_That you know of_. Kate thought, because the chances that these Avengers hadn't had some negative experiences with some version of Loki were very, very low.

"In that case… If you would give us a few minutes to confer?" Kate hit the mute button on the microphone and looked over at the rest of the team. "Do we have anyone that can do an air shield of some sort? Noh, do we have a docking system or do we need to teleport them over?"

The Marvel was the pinnacle of Kree engineering (as was Noh-Varr himself), and it showed: the ship was made with dimension-bending technology that made it bigger on the inside.

"There's a dock." Noh-Varr confirmed. "They'll have some trouble maneuvering their way in, though, because some of their propulsion is propeller-based."

"And Billy or Loki can do the air shield while America flies out and pushes them in, and I can catch and hold the plane to get it settled until the artificial gravity kicks in." Teddy suggested. "That is, if you've got some kind of helmet for her so she can breathe?"

"I have several in storage, but I doubt that they will be necessary if the air shields are properly held." Noh-Varr had that look on his face that meant he was talking about his dead crew again, and Kate turned away as fast as she could. Nope, not going there.

"Great. We've got a plan for them, then." Kate pulled her finger away from the button. "Good news, Avengers, we've got a place for you to stay and a way to get you in. We'll be pulling up alongside you and sending someone out to get you in a minute or two. Just sit tight until then."

The silence on the other end of the line lasted a few seconds, just as Kate had predicted when she'd let that little name slip, and then the one they were talking to was _Black Widow_, and wasn't that just terrifying? "Exactly what makes you think we're the Avengers?"

Kate forced a laugh out. She _knew_ the rest of the team was probably questioning her plan right now, but dammit, she knew what she was doing. "I've gone from one end of the multiverse to the other, and if I hear both Captain America _and_ Hawkeye on a team together? Good chance they're Avengers. Usually. Don't worry, we're not sure which dimension this is either, and the purple magic thing happened to us, too. We'll talk more once you're on board. So, from one Hawkeye to another: see ya!"

She hit the kill button for the transmission and sank back into her seat, tension draining from her body.

"Are you sure that was a good idea, Kate?" David finally asked, and did so far more quietly than she'd expected. "They'll trust us less like this, you know."

"They might. On the other hand? They were bound to find out eventually. Now go get America. We've got some Avengers to welcome."

o.o.o.o.o

**A/N: So… this is longer than anticipated.**

**And we haven't even met all our travelers yet!**

**By the way, I feel like I should explain Loki. However, I won't, because part of the fun is seeing how I'm going to interpret this. HOWEVER, I will say that a large influence on my interpretation of Loki and Kate's interactions with one another (which will come into play later), as well as with Noh-Varr, was Team Work by WolfenM.**

**Ja ne,**

**Phoenix**


	2. Loki is Never Actually Dead

**Aboard the Marvel**

Loki looked up as a knock sounded through the room. Well, she'd expected this much, at least.

"Come in."

Kate stepped in through the door, seemingly apologetic. "Hey guys. We're going to need to borrow one of you for a bit to keep up an air shield around the ship and those different-dimension Avengers. There's a good chance that some version of Thor is on board, so I'm not sure if you would rather…"

"I would prefer not to go out, but I doubt that Billy has the skill for this." Loki shook her head. "I can maintain the shields from here, especially if Billy helps me power them, so you don't need to worry too much. Just keeping it around the Marvel and extending out to their jet and however far America goes to get them back in, right?"

"Right." Kate paused in the doorway, hand still on the knob. "Loki? I know you have some issues with the Avengers, but we're going to have to introduce you to each other at some point if we're all going to be staying on here until you can figure out how to get us home. You don't have to come out right away, but… how long should we keep from mentioning you?"

Loki looked down at her hands, still gripping the book in her hands, one of many pulled from the hammer-space that formed her own personal pocket dimension/ever present suitcase. "Just keep me updated and I'll text Verity when I've heard enough. Have David or Billy or Teddy tell them the story of Loki and how it relates to all of you, and then… well, we'll see."

"Alright." Kate nodded, not quite approving, but at least accepting. "By the way, are you the reason we have any reception?"

Loki looked up with a small grin. "Now, Kate, that would be _telling_."

o.o.o.o.o

Kate stood in the middle of the dock (which they'd never had any need for before, but it was there), arms crossed and bow slung over her chest. Teddy stood in front of her, large and green and scaly, and America stood further out, knees bent and ready to take off and yank the Avengers from a different universe in. Eli stood at the controls, a sour look on his face, but otherwise not complaining about the fact that they were trusting their lives to the Norse God(dess) of Lies and Mischief.

"Alright, guys, let's get on this. Eli? If you would?"

"On it… captain." For a moment, there was a small smirk on his face, but it was gone within a second as he turned and entered the right code to open up the ramp that happened to be the dock entrance. "I really hope this doesn't kill us."

"It won't." Kate said, sounding a lot more confident than she was. There was an emergency closure button on the dock anyway, so even if the shields failed, or weren't up in the first place, they'd probably be fine. "Do it."

Eli pushed the button, and ever so slowly, the ramp began to lower (and the upper half of the entrance began to slide up), and Kate let out a breath of relief.

"See? Told you." As the grand view of space opened up in front of her, Kate immediately sought out the quinjet, which was fairly easy, given that it was only about twenty feet away. "America?"

"I see it."

o.o.o.o.o

**Aboard the quinjet**

"There's a teenage girl flying out to get us." Tony commented from somewhere near the ceiling; he was enjoying the lack of gravity more than he really should have. "At least, I hope she is, because if she just jumped out into space without any way to get back, I'd be pretty worried."

"I'm more worried about the one covered in green scales." Natasha commented, and everyone knew what she meant.

"Doesn't look much like the Hulk to me," Steve said hanging onto the backs of their chairs to keep himself grounded, and Bruce, way back where, relaxed minutely. "Large and green, yes, but he's just… standing there."

"Looks like he's getting ready to catch a football or something. And that football's probably us." Clint said, though his eyes were on the girl in purple. He didn't get a chance to comment on her, however, as that was the point at which a Latina girl in short-shorts landed on the nose of the quinjet. She knocked on the glass, and Clint shrugged.

The girl rolled her eyes and started shouting, loud enough to penetrate the glass. "_Turn on whatever thrusters you have, and I'll guide you in. We don't have enough air for your propellers to do anything."_

Clint glanced around the cabin, and then sighed. "Well, we're on our way to death anyway. Let's listen to the girl with the powers that make no sense."

He turned on the repulsor jets on low, and watched the girl in denim grab the nose of the plane and pull it along behind her, right into the dock, where gravity suddenly had them crashing down into the waiting arms of the kid with green skin.

"Okay," Clint started unbuckling himself, even as the jet was lurching around as the green kid manhandled them to be facing out again, the larger ship's dock closing. "Everybody out."

"Leave the weapons behind for now." Steve ordered, and then relented at the looks that they all leveled at him. "At least don't have them out in the open."

"That only applies to me and Thor, Cap." Natasha quipped, as Clint swung himself up over the chair and towards the door. "I'm not sure how you can hide an Iron Man suit."

"Some of them can turn into briefcases." Tony told them, somewhat unnecessarily. "Not this one, though. This one's more or less normal."

Steve strode up to the door on the quinjet, exchanged a glance with the rest of the team, and then just went ahead and opened it up. Walking out, he found himself face to face with the girl in purple, noticing, now that he was closer, that she had a bow slung over her shoulder, which meant she was probably…

"Kate Bishop. Hi." The girl held out a hand to Steve, and he shook it almost perfunctorily. "Over there is Eli Bradley, Teddy Altman, and America Chavez."

Steve ignored the stifled snorts behind him, well aware that whoever it was would probably be getting their ear yanked by Natasha right about now. "Steve Rogers."

"Oh, I know who you are." Kate's eyes roved over the rest of the team. "Thor, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Natasha Romanoff. Trust me, I know you guys."

"I'm hoping for an explanation on that sometime in the near future, if possible." Steve said, and Kate's eyes snapped back to him. "I take it you're in charge on here?"

"As much as anyone can be, yeah." Kate shrugged. "It's Noh-Varr's ship, though, and I don't really have too much influence on the people that are on-board but not on-team."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "You have civilians on here? Or just former teammates?"

"Teammates." Kate said immediately, though she frowned a second later. "Well, one civilian, though she's got a power of her own. You'll meet her once we get to the cockpit, which is probably where we should be going right about now. You all ready to move?"

Steve took a look back over his own team, none of whom looked too much worse for the wear; Tony was even starting to look a little _too_ curious about the technology that was currently surrounding them.

"Yes, I think we are."

"Great." Kate turned around sharply, ponytail snapping behind her. "Follow me."

o.o.o.o.o

**The Cockpit**

"…great, but the drums are a little too heavy, don't you think?"

"Hey, watch it, alien boy, I _like_ the drums."

Kate rolled her eyes at the conversation that wafted down the hall, and was pretty sure that Teddy was about to start snickering.

"Noh-Varr, are you sure this is the time?" She asked as she pushed the door open, holding it for the rest of the group as they filtered in, the Avengers' eyes showing badly hidden surprise at the alien technology (save for the Widow, who seemed unimpressed, and Tony Stark, who seemed to light up with unholy glee at the sight before him).

"I can't do much else, Kate." Noh swiveled his chair around, leaning forward. "The scanners are trying to pick up some sort of signal, but we seem to be rather… distant."

"Distant?"

"From civilization. Of any sort."

"But… that's Kree tech. Shouldn't you be able to pick up any alien ship within a couple star systems?" Kate frowned, crossing her arms again.

"I should. Even with the ship as damaged as it is, I should." Noh-Varr shrugged. "I told Tommy, so Billy is probably going to be working on that soon."

_And so is Loki_. Kate added silently. "Right, well, we'll keep that in mind."

"So, I've heard and seen at least a couple things I'd like an explanation for in the past few minutes, and I don't think I'm the only one." Stark clapped his hands, the sound metallic and clunky in the Iron Man armor. "So, who exactly are you kids?"

Kate exchanged a look with America, David, and Eli in turn, then gestured at the bolted-down chairs, taking the one next to Noh-Varr for herself. "Take a seat. I'll explain what I can, though I personally think David would be better on that front."

"Busy." David said, not looking up from the tablet he'd been fiddling with since Kate had arrived. Verity sat next to him, arms crossed and bare, showing off her tattoos. After a few seconds, she pulled out her phone, starting up a mindless game so that she could check Loki's text once it came in without having to raise suspicion about who, exactly, was texting her.

"Right." Kate sighed, and turned back to the Avengers, focusing primarily on Steve. "In any case, I'll explain _what_ we are first, since that probably caught your attention. First off, I'm the only baseline human on the ship. No powers, no alien ancestors, no experimentation, just a hell of a good aim and some decent leadership skills."

She saw Black Widow and Clint (well, she couldn't really call him that, since he wasn't her Clint, so Barton, then) exchanging a look, but soldiered on. "Anyway, do you know what the Kree are? Skrulls? No? Well, Noh-Varr's a Kree; they're an alien warrior race, and their population is mostly either blue or pink, with Noh being one of the pink ones. Teddy's half-Kree and half-Skrull; Skrulls are the enemy of the Kree, and also shapeshifters."

"That would explain the green." Stark muttered to Bruce Banner, who'd mostly just been staring at the floor.

"David's a mutant; you guys have mutants? Know what the X-gene is? Wow, okay, your dimension is _really _behind. Anyway, mutants are people born with the X-gene, giving them some superpower or other. David could absorb all the knowledge of anyone he came into close proximity with, but lost his powers during a large-scale magical fiasco a few years ago. There are two other mutants on the ship, and they both still have their powers: Tommy and Billy, identical twins, but the hair makes it easy to tell them apart. Tommy's the fast one with white hair, and Billy's the one with the magic and brown hair."

"Magic." Barton said, and Kate resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"Yes, magic. David can tell you more once he's done with whatever he's doing." Kate waved the question away. "Anyway, Billy's working on trying to get us home right now, since the Marvel's dimension-jumping drivers were damaged when it crashed to Earth the first time. And I think that just leaves Eli, Verity, and America, and they…"

"I'm not from their dimension or yours." America stated shortly from where she was leaning against the wall, and didn't elaborate.

"I'm a living lie-detector." Verity said, glancing up from the phone she was still fiddling with. "But I'm also the only person on the ship that's never been involved in any super-heroing business. Did what probably amounted to tech support for a friend that did, once, but that's about it."

Eli took a look at Steve and sighed, knowing that, with everyone else explaining themselves, he'd need to at least say something; might as well say it in a way that might gather information along the way. "In our dimension, the Super Soldier project didn't start with Steve Rogers, and I don't know if it did in yours, either. Prior to our Steve undergoing the procedure, about three hundred black men were used as guinea pigs for the project, and one of them was my grandfather; his was deemed ineffective because it didn't show any immediate results; turns out, it _did_ start working, but only after it started eating away at his mental faculties. After I took a bullet for our dimension's Captain America, I got a blood transfusion from my grandfather, and basically got the super-soldier abilities."

Steve looked ashen-faced. "I sincerely hope that our—"

"One hundred and eighty-nine."

Everyone turned to look at Bruce, who had been silent until then.

"What?" Kate prompted after no one else did.

"It wasn't three hundred in our dimension. It was one hundred and eighty-nine." Bruce was staring at his knees. "I had to go over all the data for Project Rebirth when I was working on the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project. You said your surname was Bradley?"

"…Yeah."

"Isaiah Bradley, currently ninety-three years old, two surviving children, four surviving grandchildren, five great-grandchildren." Bruce rattled off, eyes closed. "I think the version of you that exists in our world is Isaiah's great-grandson, not grandson, but I could be wrong. There were a lot of files that I had to go through. I mostly remember him because he was one of the few that were still alive after so long."

"Is he still…" Eli gestured vaguely at his head, and Bruce nodded with a grim look on his face.

"No one ever…" Steve trailed off, his skin pale and eyes wide.

"No one ever told you? Don't act so surprised." Tony's bitter voice was like a slap to the face, from what Kate saw. "I've told you what my dad was like when he wasn't playing up the benevolent scientist aspect for precious Captain America. I don't know all that much about Erskine, but there are a _lot_ of things that my dad kept hidden from the people who needed to know the most. Scientists aren't always the most moral people on the planet, Cap. Remember that."

"I'm guessing you're not fond of your dad." Kate said, grimacing.

"Not particularly. Why?" The look he shot her was calculating, warning.

"Hey, hey, I'm not knocking it." Kate held her hands up defensively. "Trust me, I know what it's like to be the little rich kid wanting to prove herself and hating dad. Trust me, I got that down, and I even ditched his support after I found out he'd been funding a supervillain back home. I get it. I just…" Kate lowered her arms, and leaned forward, suddenly much more serious. "I'm mostly just wondering if you're as much of a, well… as much of an asshole as in our dimension."

Tony opened up his mouth to retaliate, but got cut off by David. "Before this goes into dangerous territory, let me just ask you something: what would you do if there was a teenager with a potentially dangerous level of power and a debatable family history of mental illness?"

"That… really depends on the kind of power?" Tony raised an eyebrow. "But has the kid done anything genuinely dangerous yet?"

"He unintentionally rendered a group of homophobic white supremacists in downtown Manhattan comatose after one of them threatened to let a nuke go off and directly threatened his boyfriend in the process." David answered as calmly as he could. "He also allied himself with his grandfather, a known terrorist, in an attempt to find his mother, after our dimension's Avengers told him that it was better to leave the woman in question alone due to her own powers."

"…I'm honestly more concerned about the known terrorist bit?" Tony glanced at the rest of the team. "Was my counterpart the only one to—"

"Not the only one to react badly. Not even the worst." David shook his head. "However, during the minor civil war that occurred within the super-powered community for several months, the Avengers were split, and your counterpart was the one to take what many within the community considered the wrong side."

"The conflict was over something called the Superhuman Registration Act. Basically, the government wanted all supers to have public identities and be officially registered with the government." Kate took over the explanation. "Most of the heroes supporting the bill already had public identities, and I think that was part of the reason they didn't understand why others were so… angry about it."

"I'm guessing," Black Widow started, "that those opposed to it were worried about their leaked identities causing trouble for them off the clock?"

"Yeah, basically. Putting family and friends in danger, not being able to have any downtime as themselves, that sort of thing." Kate shrugged. "The whole thing could have blown over pretty peacefully, but a lot of people got hurt due to some supervillains blowing up and killing… how many was it, David?"

"Approximately six hundred civilians, sixty of whom were schoolchildren, the supervillain team, and the superheroes fighting them." David didn't look up from his tablet. "That was the tipping point at which the public went from ambivalence to aggressively supportive of the bill."

"And my other self was one of the ones supporting the bill?" Tony bit his lip. "I'm not really one for the government micromanaging me or anyone else, and I definitely don't want anyone telling me how to do the Iron Man job, what with all the HYDRA goons involved and the amount of heavy weaponry I have, and I took a pretty big risk going public myself, one that I've been paying for since I did it, so I can see why people wouldn't support the bill. I mean, I don't really regret it, because _someone's_ got to be the public face for the team, and the only other person that can afford that is Steve, and he's used to different kind of media, and… I had a point. What was my point?"

"Something about the bill?" Verity prompted, slightly impressed at the fact that the only outright lying she'd detected so far was when Kate had omitted Loki from her list of people on the ship that hadn't been introduced yet.

"Right! So, this superhero civil war or whatever; what exactly happened during it? You know, casualties, damages, all that. I mean, my counterpart was clearly a complete dick about it, but what exactly caused all the hate?"

"The Runaways, for one thing." Teddy said, and Kate let him take the wheel. Of everyone on the team, he'd been closest to their fellow ragtag team of child superheroes, at least before they'd lost Xavin. "They were… a bunch of kids from the West Coast that had found out their parents were supervillains, found out their own superpowers, fought their parents, and then gone on the run. They lost a couple people on the way, picked up a few others, and during the conflict, they got targeted for being unregistered superhumans. Or, well… unregistered supers, anyway. Not all of them were human."

"Majesdanian, Skrull, mutant, human magician, half-android half-human, and the one normal guy who just happened to have a psychic link to a dinosaur." Kate rattled off, ticking each one off on a finger as she went. "That was their roster at the time. Later on, they lost the dinosaur and picked up a mutant from the early twentieth century instead."

"And when you say targeted…" Barton trailed off, looking unsurprised at the implications.

"With extreme prejudice. At least a handful would have been dead without their powers." Kate explained. "We thought Xavin _was _dead for a while."

"Once again, I would like to apologize, but I wasn't in my right mind during that particular altercation." Noh-Varr piped up.

"We know," Eli grumbled, and then took in the looks on the faces of the Avengers. "There was a prison of sorts for superpowered beings in our dimension called the Cube. Noh-Varr was a prisoner for…"

"About five months." Noh-Varr finished the sentence. "During my time there, I was rather intently studied and experimented upon. They figured out a way to control me through the nanites in my blood and the vestiges of the mental connection I had had to Plex and my dead comrades, with a large part of that control occurring after they removed the link between my pain receptors and auditory cortex, forcing me to experience excruciating agony whenever they decided I deserved it." Noh-Varr's smile was outright chilling. "If I remember correctly, the entire facility was SHIELD-operated."

"And you were _how_ old?" Tony Stark, Kate was pleased to see, looked rather horrified.

"I believe I was nearing my eighteenth birthday by your count at the time of my capture, and had passed it by the time I was… sent out on the Warden's 'missions.'" Noh-Varr tilted his head, and Kate saw a hint of the boy that had been a ruthless killing machine, something that had been hidden beneath the much happier, much freer hipster alien boy with the fancy spaceship and cool hair. "After I was released, I attempted to atone for some of the mistakes I had made while I was still free prior to my capture, but I failed rather miserably and ended up being, for the most part, banned from the planet."

"What the actual fuck." Tony was sitting stock-still. "Who… who would…?"

"Can we move on?" Teddy suddenly requested, and the words seemed to take a loaded weight off of everyone, suddenly making it much easier to breath, in the manner that one felt when they hadn't realized that they'd been finding it difficult in the first place, but infinitely relieving nonetheless. "What about you guys? You've obviously been at this for less time than the heroes in our world, and I don't think I've heard Thor say a single word since you got here, which is… weird. We told you about ourselves, so… your turn?"

"Natasha Romanoff, codenamed Black Widow, but you already knew that." The woman's eyes flicked over each of them. "Former SHIELD field operative, current Avenger. As far as the rest of the team is concerned, I was involved in the Hammertech incident, the Chitauri attack, and the recent fall of SHIELD when we discovered the… HYDRA infestation."

"And she's tied for the youngest one here." Stark added with a grin, half-faked, as Black Widow shot him a _look_. "You and Steve are, both, what, thirty? At most?"

"Yeah, that's definitely different." Teddy pointed out. "The Natasha Romanoff in our dimension was supposedly born in the late twenties, injected with the Soviet's version of the super-soldier serum, and hasn't really _aged_ in the decades since then as a result."

"…Well, that's certainly not what happened with me." A small smirk, a twitching finger, all signs of _something_, though Kate was sure only David knew enough about the links between psychology and muscular twitches to say what, and he wasn't paying attention, "While I can't account for all my memories, I've been aging normally for the years I can remember, and there are several people that can attest to that."

"Fair enough." Kate shrugged, and waited for whoever was next. No need to push them too much; despite probably having less experience in the superhero business than her own team, this version of the Avengers was older than every person Kate's team… barring, perhaps, Loki, but she was a case of her own on that front.

"In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, General Ross revived the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project, and I was recruited for it due to my experience with gamma radiation." Bruce started, finally looking up from the floor. Kate started wishing they had some sort of table or desk to work at, but that was all in the kitchen. "In 2006, I volunteered to be a test subject for one of the options we'd come up with, causing the… _creation_ of the Hulk. I was labelled a threat to national security, became a fugitive, ran. They tracked me down in Rio; I had to run to New York to meet with someone I'd been collaborating with to try and cure myself, ended up breaking Harlem. Ran off to India, did some work as a medical doctor, got tracked by SHIELD, and was recruited during the whole mess with Loki and the Tesseract. I've spent the past two years at Stark Tower, and that's it."

Kate blinked. "Well. We, uh… I didn't really need all that, but it's good to know. I'll just go ahead and assume you've got control over the Hulk and move on."

"Does that make me next? Because I have to tell you, it's basically the same as Tasha's with a few different events." Barton leaned back in his seat, hands folded up behind his head. "Former SHIELD, current Avenger, codename Hawkeye. Involved in the incident where Thor first ended up on Earth in New Mexico, and the Chitauri attack. Last two years have mostly been undercover activities for me."

"And the farm." Black Widow reminded him, and Kate's eyebrows shot up.

"And I bought a farm." Barton nodded. "Okay, Stark next."

"…Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist?" Tony shrugged. "Though with things being the way they are with Pepper now, I can't really count the playboy label anymore. I became Iron Man during after being kidnapped in Afghanistan a few years ago; turned out that was actually my old mentor, and I ended up having to kill him. Then there was the week where I was dying and Justin Hammer decided to hire the son of one of my dad's old business partners to help him build some kind of drone and almost ended up getting several thousand people killed, because said son had a grudge against my family. Then it was the Chitauri and Tesseract thing, and after that was the Mandarin. Who apparently wasn't the _actual_ Mandarin, but was still Killian trying to steal my girlfriend and kill me and the president and a bunch of other people, so, you know, bad news all around. I think that's all the major stuff. Cap?"

Steve hadn't spoken much since the 189-test-subjects thing had come up, and looked a little startled to be brought up now. "I… I joined the army because of Erskine in 1943, and went through Project Rebirth the same year. I went down in a plane in '43, and woke up right before the Loki-Tesseract-Chitauri mess. I ran missions for SHIELD until we found evidence of HYDRA in the organization, and helped Natasha take it all down. Since then I've just been trying to take down what's left of HYDRA and find Bucky."

"Not trying to tell you guys what to do or anything, but you _really_ don't need to tell us more than you're comfortable with." Kate shifted in her seat, exchanging a glance with Eli. "I mean, I appreciate being able to draw some lines in the sand as far as the differences between our dimensions go, but we didn't give you nearly this much information."

"Ah, but you will."

Kate froze, tensing up, because that was the one voice that she hadn't heard since the Quinjet had been pulled in. Slowly, she turned her head to look at the person that had spoken, and her eyes caught those of Thor Odinson, God of Thunder and apparently the guy that was currently staring at her like she held all the answers he needed.

"That so?" Kate sat up straighter, covering up her sudden anxiety with bravado as well as she could. "And what exactly do you want to know?"

She wasn't the only one that seemed to be confused, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Stark (and wasn't that weird?) was speaking up, presumably on her side. "I'm pretty sure you kids told us more than necessary with the family history of guinea pigs and that Cube place."

"Perhaps, but they've not yet explained why the energy aboard this ship holds such strong traces of my brother's magic, or at the least, something quite close to it." And suddenly, Thor's terrifyingly intense gaze on her made sense.

"That…" Kate closed her eyes and took a deep breath, opening them up again as she exhaled. "That is a very long and complicated story. I'm still not sure anyone other than our dimension's Loki knows the whole thing."

"I know most of it." Verity offered, fingers already darting around her phone to bring up the text message function so she could tell Loki about the latest turn in events. "Still not everything, but I know most of the recent events on that front, and if I'm not wrong, then the only other people that know that much are Hela and Mephisto, and I'm pretty sure Hela's knowledge came from the fact that she's known parts of our Loki's plans for millennia longer than most of the Asgardians in our dimension have been alive. Mephisto… well, he figured it out because he was the one getting screwed over."

"…Like I said, a long story, and I don't think the ending's been written yet." Kate grimaced. "We could explain what we do know, but I can't promise the whole thing will be completely accurate."

"One story for another, then." Thor nodded, and opened his mouth to speak. However, he was cut off midway as a silver and green blur rushed into the room.

"Kate!"

"Tommy? What are you… never mind. Avengers, Tommy. Tommy, alternate dimension Avengers." Kate turned her attention fully to the boy that was nearly vibrating. "What do you need?"

"What happens if we run out of jam?"

"Have we actually run out of jam?"

"No, but there are only a few jars total and we need to know what to do when we need more."

"Find something else to use, because blood still isn't an option. Syrup, motor oil, peanut butter, I don't care. No one's bleeding out for magic spells. Anything else?"

"Notyetbye!" And with that, he was gone.

"…Jam?" Stark asked almost carefully. "And was that one of the twins you mentioned?"

"Apparently, certain foods are liable to act as decent magical conduits, and I've banned them from using blood, even though it's apparently the most effective. And yes, that was Tommy, AKA Speed." Kate explained, then turned to Thor. "Right, you were saying?"

Thor eyed her a little strangely for several seconds, but then launched into his own story. "Loki and I grew up together on Asgard, and were on decent terms until several years ago. During my coronation, Loki arranged for several Jötunn to enter Asgard and get almost all the way to the Casket of Ancient Winters. To hear him tell the tale later, it was his attempt at preventing my coronation and showing everyone why I was as of yet unsuited to be king; as I now know, he was right in that respect, however poorly he went about in his attempt to prevent my ascension to the throne. I was… far too rash and impulsive, and did not understand that diplomacy was often a better path to take than simply destroying whatever caused the problem."

"Yeah, we all learn that at some point." Kate said, though she chanced a glance at Verity, who was still staring at her phone in apparent boredom. Good. No real lies yet.

"I reacted to the incursion in a hasty manner, and went against my father's orders and… I staged an invasion of Jotunheim, with a party consisting solely of myself, my brother, and Sif and the Warriors Three." Thor shook his head. "My father was most displeased, and cast me down to Midgard, stripped of my powers. The Lady Jane aided me during my time there, while on Asgard, my father entered an unexpected Odinsleep, and Loki became king in turn."

"That's a little different from home," David commented from where he was still playing with the tablet; Kate could only catch a glimpse of the equations he was working on, and couldn't understand them at all. "When Odin wasn't capable of doing his job for some reason, and our dimension's Thor wasn't judged capable, a trio of goddesses were named the 'All-Mother' and ran things in his stead."

"Aye. Loki's knowledge of the position notwithstanding, allowing my mother to rule during the Odinsleep may have been a better choice." Thor nodded, somewhat to Kate's surprise. "Nonetheless, Loki becoming king came right on the heels of his discovery that he was… not of Aesir blood."

"He figured out he was a frost giant." Kate summarized, rolling her eyes at the surprised looks on some of the older faces in the room. "Please; I've seen that form myself. Trust me, _that_ isn't a secret back home. In fact, I'm pretty sure our dimension's Loki was raised fully aware of the fact that he was genetically a frost giant."

"He was." Verity added, for the benefit of everyone there, and following Kate's example in keeping to stereotypically male pronouns for the time being; they could explain Loki's flouting of the gender binary later.

"That… also may have been a better choice." Thor admitted.

"Don't bet on it." America said, pushing off the wall and coming around to stand behind Kate, leaning on the seatback. "It didn't do ours much good."

"I see." Thor said, hanging his head. "In any case, the discovery caused Loki to lose much of his sensibility, and possibly part of his sanity. He convinced me that my Father had died as a result of my actions, and that I was no longer welcome on Asgard. Later, he sent the Destroyer to attack me after the Lady Sif and Warriors Three came to visit me, though I believe he was not completely aware of my then-mortality. I doubt he would have sent it had he been aware of the fact that I was truly in danger from the creature. By the time I became once more worthy of Mjolnir and made my way back to Asgard, Loki had opened the Bifrost in such a manner as to release the full power upon Jotunheim. And when the full power of the Bifrost is aimed at any particular realm, it is enough to destroy the realm in question."

Another difference to chalk up, then. However their Bifrost worked, it most certainly wasn't going to destroy anything that easily. Kate shuddered a the idea of how the one from the other dimension worked.

"My father woke, and together, he and I managed to stop Loki, but I was forced to destroy the Bifrost in the process, and Loki… he chose to fall to his death." Thor closed his eyes, jaw clenched, and Kate tried, she really, really did, but just…

"I call bullshit. I'm sorry, but I do." Kate winced at all the glares turned her way, but soldiered on. "In all seriousness: Loki? A bit like Dr. Doom. He never really _stays_ dead. Or… he was never dead in the first place? Either-or, really."

"I… can't really argue that." Teddy shrugged apologetically.

"Same." David said.

"There's always something." Verity nodded.

"Faking." America suggested.

"Reincarnation." Noverityh-Varr continued.

"Clone with memories." Teddy added.

"Made a deal with Hela." Eli tossed in.

"_Actually _a Doombot, because even supervillains have friends and/or allies sometimes_._" Kate finished, and shrugged at the Avengers, all of whom were staring at the younger team in something approaching shock. "The number of times that Loki has supposedly died in our universe is ridiculous."

"And it's the same in every other," America snorted. "I've seen a lot of universes, and I've only ever seen one Loki that died and stayed that way."

Kate bit her lip as she remembered exactly which universe America was referring to. Loki became king, once, in all the worlds they'd seen, and then all of Asgard turned to naught but skeletons, as though they'd simply lain down and died where they slept.

Even when Loki won, he lost.

"That's… not very promising." Barton made a face, and Kate pursed her lips. She'd noticed the tension in him as soon as Thor started talking, and it was clear there was some negative history of some sort on that front, and it seemed that, as per usual, Loki was the source of it.

"You'd be surprised." David was smirking down at the tablet now. "Sometimes the world needs a little Loki."

"And when it doesn't, I'm there to make sure he stays out of it." America was outside Kate's line of site, but her voice carried her grin pretty easily.

"_Anyway_," Kate stressed the word, catching the attention of everyone in the room. "I could be wrong, but I doubt that's the end of the story, considering the others brought up something to do with Loki, something called the Tesseract, something called the Chitauri, and New York?"

"Loki came to Earth and tried to take over." Black Widow told them, apparently tired of Thor's rather… _verbose_ storytelling method. "He used something called the Tesseract and a scepter that could be used to take over people's minds, and brought an alien race called the Chitauri to New York City to stage an invasion. After the death of SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson, the Avengers were rallied together and sent to close the portal and fend off the invading army."

"Chitauri…" Kate shook her head. "Can't say I've heard of them. David?"

"A race much like the Skrulls, often allied with Titus, and frequent enemies of the Nova Corps. Not a particularly friendly species." David didn't even look up, which was a little rude, but he was doing his job, so whatever.

"In our dimension, they were underlings of Thanos's." Thor told them, and Kate sucked in a breath. Ouch. Thanos was usually a pretty big threat in any dimension.

"Thanos had interest in your Earth? Do you have any idea what drew his attention?" Noh-Varr asked, swiveling slowly from one side to the other in his chair.

"I believe he may have simply thought Loki a worthwhile ally and decided to provide him with a temporary army that hungered for a world to devour, while Loki himself chose the target." Thor explained a little uneasy. "The Tesseract's presence on the planet may have also drawn his attention."

"That's…" Noh-Varr shook his head. "Never mind. My knowledge on Thanos may well be useless for your dimension. Did you at least manage to successfully remove the Chitauri?"

"I flew a nuke through that portal." Stark said, looking thoughtful. "And they all kind of fell down all lifeless after that, if people are telling me the truth. Probably took care of a pretty big portion of them."

"Uh… yeah, probably." Kate's eyes were wide. "Mind if I ask why you had a nuke in the first place?"

"Because the World Security Council is staffed by trigger-happy assholes." Stark answered promptly. "They aimed it at Manhattan to take out the Chitauri before we figured out how to close the portal, going over Fury's head and… basically just making an ultimately unnecessary choice to kill several million people before we'd figured out whether there was a better solution or not."

"Wait, go back." David sat up straighter, putting down the tablet for a moment. "You said that they all fell down after you sent the nuke through?"

"Either that or when I closed the portal." Black Widow answered. "The two happened within seconds of one another, and we have no way of knowing when exactly the nuke went off."

"Either way, that implies that the Chitauri from your dimension have some sort of… hive mind." David tapped his fingers rapidly against the tablet. "Noh? Do you think…?"

"It's a possible side effect of a sudden loss of connection, yes." Noh-Varr made a place. "Certainly not with the Kree, but with more rudimentary or more naturally evolved forms, it's a possibility."

"Well, that's something to consider the next time we have to deal with them." Steve said.

"Which is hopefully never." Stark added brightly. "And yeah, we kinda figured that out, but it took SHIELD a bit longer than you, kid. Impressive."

"And this is where we ask Thor to pretty-please continue the story, and then we can tell you ours." Kate gestured, publicity smile plastered on her face.

Stark was giving her a look. So was Captain America. Oh, they knew _exactly_ where this smile came from.

"Over a year ago, an old enemy of Asgard's awoke from a very long sleep. The Dark Elves of Svartalfheim and their leader, Malekith, returned to prominence and launched an attack on Asgard, presumably searching for something called the Aether."

A green blur came into the room. "Hey, just coming down to check how things are going. Kate?"

"We're fine. Thor's just telling us about his experiences with Malekith." Please stay.

"That guy's an asshole. Also? Kind of boring. I'll go back to watching Billy try to figure out how not to mess up his magic. Later." And with that, he was gone.

"…Dammit, Tommy. I was going to ask him to stay for a while, but… okay. He can keep doing supply runs if that's what he feels like doing." Kate turned back to Thor. "Sorry about all the interruptions."

"I will say that they are rather interesting interruptions, Lady Kate." Wow. Lady. No one called her a lady unless they were trying to call her Lady Hawkeye (which usually resulted in her threatening them). This just sounded kind of cutely respectful, though, so she allowed it. "Nonetheless, I will return to my story."

"The Lady Jane had encountered several portals and what she referred to as 'gravitational anomalies' on Midgard near the city of London, and had fallen through one, right into the room hosting the Aether, and had become infected by it. I brought her to Asgard afterwards as a precaution, and took her to the healing rooms. However, as she had disturbed the Aether and now hosted part of it, the Elves came. The first incursion of the Dark Elves resulted in a prison break, though my brother chose to stay in his cell, for whatever reason. That prison break resulted in my mother Frigga's death."

"Well, shit. That sucks." The voice came from right behind Kate.

Kate jumped in her seat and spun around. "What the _hell_, Tommy?"

"I got bored and came back." He put a finger to his lips, winking. "Shh… story time."

"I don't… never mind. Continue." She pulled Tommy around from behind her (hadn't America been there? She must have moved at some point), and sat him down on the floor by her knees. "You stay still. Sorry for Tommy interrupting you during a part that was clearly very emotional for you."

Tommy would have complained, but Kate had quickly learned that, like most people, Tommy grew rather compliant when someone ran their hands through his hair, much like a cat.

Now that he was here, it wouldn't be too difficult to keep him.

Thor seemed both insulted and confused, but Kate's apology had at least somewhat mollified him, it seemed. "Following my mother's death, my father imprisoned Jane, blaming her for her death. After all that had happened, I could not stand to see another innocent blamed for something that could not have been prevented, and I recruited Sif, the Warriors Three, and even my brother to help me bring Jane home."

"You trusted Loki?"

"I trusted that Loki would be angry enough over my mother's death and his own imprisonment to blame my father, and do whatever he could to spite him." Thor turned his gaze to Eli. "Do not think that I have forgotten how the air here carries magic much like my brother's; you have done something similar once, have you not?"

"Circumstances gave us no other choice." Kate said, rather stiffly. "And in the end, we learned a bit more about Loki than he'd wanted to tell anyone in the multiverse, let alone a bunch of teen heroes that he'd barely encountered before, if at all."

"I see." Thor shifted in his seat. "My brother did aid me, and quite handily. However, while Malekith and his kin were beaten, Loki died during a battle on Svartalfheim."

Kate glanced at the rest of the team. She really didn't want to say it, but…

"Did you ever find the body?" Well, America could ask it instead.

"No?"

Kate bit her lip. No, she really didn't want to give this Thor false hope, but…

"Yeah, well, I'd watch out for daggers aimed at your back for the next few centuries." America snorted, perching herself on the armrest of Eli's chair. "I'm not saying he's _definitely_ alive—"

"Just that you should watch your back, especially since he's apparently already fake-died once." Kate finished the sentence. "I don't want to raise your hopes or anything, but Lokis are notoriously… tricky."

"I'll say." Verity muttered. "And proud of it, to boot."

"Now, I believe an explanation is due?" Thor turned to look at Kate, who shrugged.

"As much as I'd love to help you there, I'm not the one to ask. You gave us your full histories, so we'll give you the history of our team, as quickly as possible, and then the story behind our dimension's Loki. But for those stories, you don't start with me." Kate turned to look at Teddy and Eli. "You start with them."


	3. Tony Stark is Occasionally Useful

**A/N: The first half of this chapter contains exposition peppered by banter and emotional manipulation. If you've read Journey Into Mystery, most of the Young Avengers runs, Loki: Agent of Asgard, and Original Sin: Thor & Loki - The Tenth Realm, you are free to skim and skip to the funny parts. If you haven't, you may find it helpful to read the Verity and the Young Avenger's stories about themselves and Loki, some of which are fairly lacking in detail anyway, and some of which are quite verbose.**

o.o.o.o.o

_Last time:_

_"As much as I'd love to help you there, I'm not the one to ask. You gave us your full histories, so we'll give you the history of our team, as quickly as possible, and then the story behind our dimension's Loki. But for those stories, you don't start with me." Kate turned to look at Teddy and Eli. "You start with them." _

Teddy looked at Eli.

Eli looked at Teddy.

"You go first." Teddy said, swiveling away. "I can take care of the part with Billy and the botched spell last September."

"It all started with a guy named Nate from the thirty-first century. He was… well, he was an okay kid at the time. He wanted a group of teen heroes, because the adult teams had all fallen to pieces, and he needed to find a way to prevent himself from becoming a villain called Kang the Conqueror." Eli started off. "He started off by recruiting kids with powers and way too much of an interest in becoming superheroes. At least, he thought we all had powers. I was… well, I didn't get mine until later, and the way I faked it until then isn't something I'm proud of. In any case, we tried helping Nate, and figured out Teddy's rather… _interesting_ family history in the process."

"Right." Eli soldiered on. "Anyway, partway through, we were joined by Kate,"

"Hey." Kate waved, just in case they'd forgotten her name (as people were wont to do in such large groups).

"…and Cassie." Eli winced, as did several others in the room. "We were a team for a while, up until the end of the mess with the time-travelling Kang the Conqueror, and then Nate went back to the future, leaving behind the armor he'd worn, which… had sort of been imbued with Nate's brainwaves and the A.I. that was, at one point, the Vision, also known as Tommy and Billy's original dad."

Heads turned towards Tommy, who opened his mouth… and closed it again. He repeated the process twice, before finally just shrugging and saying, "Yeah, our family tree is complicated. Basically, our mom was the Scarlet Witch, who married an android, but really wanted kids, so she asked a coven of witches to help her magic herself into a pregnancy. That all went fine, she had a pair of bouncing baby boys, yada yada, but then the boys disappeared one day, and it turned out their souls had actually been shards of Mephisto's soul, which he decided he wanted back. Scarlet Witch goes nuts, kills her husband and two of her teammates in the process, and gets sent to live alone except for Professor X, Uncle Pietro, and Grandpa Erik on the abandoned island of Genosha. Stuff happens, she ends up warping reality into one where mutants are more common than humans and her kids are still alive, but that ended up being destroyed because, well, it was really all just one illusion, right? Anyway, while it was being destroyed, she did some giant magicky bit and nullified the powers of most of the mutants on the planet, taking the population from a couple million to a couple hundred. That's when David lost his powers. She ended up amnesiac in Latveria, and… the rest of the story comes later, but when she remade the world when the giant illusion was destroyed, she accidently recreated her sons as existing children in other families. Because that's a thing you can do when you're a reality-warping all-powerful sorceress."

"…I can't tell if you're telling the truth and your world is completely ridiculous, or if you're just lying." Barton leaned back in his seat, almost grinning. "I kind of don't want to figure out."

"Wait 'til you meet my brother." Tommy grinned back, challenging.

"If I could go back to the story?" Eli coughed. "Kate got us new costumes and a headquarters in some abandoned warehouse her dad owned, and in case you were wondering, the younger version of the Vision that we got had zero of the originals actually memories and experiences, and was basically a kid like us. He called himself Jonas.

"There was my problem with MGH, which I'd really rather not get into, and I quit the team for a while. We all got interviewed by Jessica Jones… and then the mess with the Super Skrull happened. Basically… um… well, an overpowered Skrull called the Super Skrull, named Kl'rt, showed up to try and take Teddy back to their home world, because he was apparently lost royalty. Unfortunately, Mrs. Altman got killed in the process."

"My biological mom was a Skrull princess, and my biological dad was a Kree war hero. The two races hate each other, and I've got groups on both sides trying to make a claim." Teddy said, clearly uncomfortable. "I was raised by a nursemaid, and until Skrulls started showing up on our doorstep, I thought she was my biological mother. Still, if I ever refer to my mom, I'm talking about her. However, if any of us refer to a person as simply 'Mother,' we are not referring to a parent of any of ours, but to an interdimensional parasite that called herself that. I wouldn't be mentioning my mom, but her death kind of set the stage for… well, something."

"We realized we needed more people, so Jonas accessed the old Vision's list of contingency plans for other teen heroes, and we broke Tommy out of prison."

"You _what?_" Stark blurted out, and he wasn't the only one staring in shock.

"I blew up my school by accident before I got ahold of my powers," Tommy cheerfully explained. "I mean, I was going in and out of juvie before that, but after I blew up the school, they decided that turning me into a test subject was a better idea than trying to set me up on the straight and narrow."

"Just how many of you were experimented on?" Steve asked, clearly scandalized, and it seemed like the others were too.

"Uh…" Kate thought it over, "As far as I know, Teddy a bit, if you don't count the chair thing, Billy a bit, Tommy a lot, Noh-Varr a lot, Verity not at all, me not at all, Eli not at all, and I don't know about America and David."

"Nothing on me, Princess. Nobody good enough to catch me." America crossed her arms.

"I certainly _did_ some experimentation, but not on anything living." David answered bluntly. "I do have all the memories of the people I've met that did, though."

"A genius multiplied by an enormous number." Tommy joked, remembering one of the things he'd said to David during their second meeting. "Including the evil mad science-y ones."

"It does have its downsides." David acknowledged.

"Guys, we got distracted again." Teddy waved his hand through the air, catching everyone's attention. "Eli?"

"After we broke Tommy out of the testing facility, we fought the Super Skrull again and won. We kind of blew up the UN building in the process, but we won and the aliens managed to get some shared custody thing going on with Teddy. I got shot during the fighting and got a blood transfusion from my grandfather, and got the serum as a result."

"And that was when someone first suggested that Billy and I were the Scarlet Witch's missing sons." Tommy added.

"After that…" Eli gulped. "After that came the superhero civil war, and you already heard most of that. That was the first time we met the Runaways, and Noh-Varr, and we met the Runaways again pretty soon after that, during the _actual_ Skrull invasion, not just Kl'rt trying to kidnap Teddy. That was a bit less convoluted on our part, just fight the guys with green skin that happen to be neither Teddy nor Xavin."

"And take out the creepy Skrull assassin lady that had it in for me." Teddy shuddered. "Had to call on some old Sunday school classes and the whole Dorrek thing to bluff my way into catching her off guard enough to actually knock her out."

"Right. Then there was the Norman Osborn thing, and we were a bit split up then, and the same thing happened during the Siege of Asgard, but those were, again, mostly just point and get the guys doing the bad stuff." Eli continued. "Um… I think Teddy or Tommy should take the next one."

Tommy, true to his epithet, sped through the explanation. "The thing we mentioned earlier with Billy and the nuke happened, he got taken prisoner, we all escaped, and then grandpa Erik, AKA Magneto, AKA the known former terrorist, showed up and offered to help us find the Scarlet Witch. Billy's a moron, so he said yes, and we all followed him. We found a Doombot version of her in Transia, then found the real her as an amnesiac at Castle Doom in Latveria, about to marry Doctor Doom, because amnesia makes love blind or something. Everyone tried to kill us, but most tried to kill her, Nate showed up again, we brought Cassie's dad back to life, the Witch got her memories back, Billy and I were actually her kids, she tried to give all the mutants their powers back, and Doctor Doom ended up going drunk off the power of the Life Force and super-powerful in the process. Doom killed Cassie, Nate killed Jonas, and the team split up, because everyone felt too guilty to go back to being heroes. It was a bad day."

"…You kids have gone through more trauma than most of our team, haven't you?" Steve asked, palming his face in a manner that only made him seem weary.

"As a group, yeah, but individually might be a different story." Kate shifted in her seat, fingers stilling where they were twined through Tommy's hair. "It's… I think your dimension just has lower standards for this sort of thing. Things are happening on a more or less constant basis back home, while it looks like superhero-level events only happen once every couple of months for you guys, at most. It seems terrible because we're going into so much detail, but if I'm not mistaken, Stark was put through the wringer before he became Iron Man, and probably has some problems with alcohol. Cap, you're a man out of time, and most of your friends are either dead or under some kind of mind control at this point. I can't say anything for this version of Clint Barton, because I know our Clint's backstory a little too well, all things considered. Black Widow doesn't even remember most of her history, and no version of the Hulk is happy with their lot unless they actually _like_ mindless destruction. And Thor… well, we already heard your story."

"I have, and while your story is interesting, and I feel nothing but respect for you and what you have gone through, I must ask where my brother comes into play."

"About three words into our next adventure." Kate said. "We… worked with him for a while. He was on the team, for various reasons."

"You trusted Loki enough to put him on your team?" Ouch. The disapproval of the Black Widow _stung_.

"Trusted? No. Tolerated and grew fond of, yes, but never quite _trusted_. Still don't, even if we're trying to move past it all." Kate shrugged. "But the Loki we know is very different from the one you know, by now. And that story… Verity, do you mind?"

Verity looked up, and after a moment, sighed and slipped her phone into her pocket.

"What you have to understand," she started, and the words came across like a phrase heard so many times that memorization was a foregone conclusion, "is that the gods in our worlds are creatures of story. They aren't just aliens; they're actual gods, and there are certain rules they have no choice but to follow. Once a god or goddess steps into a role, they're stuck for a very, very long time. Loki stepped into the role of the villain once, and after that, he no longer had any easy path to step out of it."

"I can give you the details, but quite frankly? Loki is my best friend, and he's not here in the room to keep me from leaking any details he doesn't want you to hear the way the rest of the people here could have, if they wanted to, so I'm going to be as vague as possible. Ragnarok happened, supposedly on some cycle, and at some point in the process, Loki died. A while later, our dimension's Thor found what seemed to be a young Loki in Paris. Old Loki had arranged for his own reincarnation as a Plan B, and this reincarnation had none of the old Loki's memories; complete blank slate. After an incident involving Mephisto getting ahold of a crown made of young Loki's fears, the young Loki needed to be erased to prevent Mephisto from taking over hell; killing him wouldn't work. A creature that was technically a phantom of the old Loki's thoughts and memories devoured the innocent younger Loki's soul, taking over his body, and the fear crown was destroyed. That's when he joined the Young Avengers."

There. She'd left out everything about the Serpent, about Leah and the shadow-sword-pen, about Hela and the Disir and the Manchester Gods, about the shirtless asshole and Volstagg and Sigurd and Thor himself. Bare bones, and not a lie to be seen.

She was good, really.

"A while later," America took over, not bothering to give the Avengers time to reorient themselves, "that Loki contacted me and tried to convince me to kill Wiccan—"

"Billy," Kate clarified.

"—saying that he was too dangerous to be left alive. It later turned out that he was tricking me into protecting Wiccan, officially from him, but actually from Mother. Which was also his fault."

"The thing with Mother," Teddy took over, "was that Billy felt guilty about some things he'd said to me, and decided to make it up to me by searching through alternate dimensions and finding a version of my mom that wasn't dead yet and bringing her home. He ended up taking the bait of some interdimensional parasite instead, a creature that takes the shape of people's parents and then possesses the parents around them while making all adults in the general area completely unaware of anything going wrong, which meant the Avengers from our dimension were basically useless and handed us right over to Mother without a second thought. _Somebody_ messed with the spell, though, and that somebody was Loki, but America messed with his messing up the spell, and instead of nullifying it, the spell ended up tied to everyone we teamed up with at first in…stead." Teddy thought over what he'd just said. "…I really don't want to think about how much of Loki's messing with the spell was intentional."

"I don't think any of us do." Kate muttered, because the idea that Loki could have somehow predicted her and Noh-Varr happening on that exact night was slightly ridiculous and rather creepy.

"Anyway, Loki hunted us down after the first time Mother caught us, got us out of her pocket dimension, did his usual schtick trying to trick us into something, and then we tried to take him to the Asgardians, because we figured he'd caused part of the problem. Thing is, whenever we went near where one of parents died, the dead parent was brought back to life and put under Mother's control, and since a couple of us had parents that died splattered across the multiverse, we couldn't really run from them. More to the point, though, when we visited our dimension's Asgard, or rather, Asgardia, we ended up stumbling on the place where Laufey died. We got our asses kicked by the giant blue ice monster for a while, trying to avoid the threats of being eaten, and got saved by America here. Then her moms showed up, and Loki took us all away to a nightclub to hide for a bit, at which point Mother found us again. Kate and Noh showed up to the rescue, and we all piled into the spaceship. Billy's parents, Mother, and the Amerimoms followed us, more dead parents showed up, we ran, we got caught, and Billy gave Loki his powers for ten minutes in an act of desperation."

"Bet that worked for you." Stark snarked, and Teddy smiled back, far too pleasantly for anyone's comfort.

"It did, actually. He ran away at first, but he was back with a spell ready a few minutes later, and we got rid of all the dead parents with his help. After that, we decided we needed to leave New York while we came up with a battle plan, and started going around the galaxy hunting for clues and hero work."

"Nobody invited me, or even told me what was going on, so I got to deal with my own stuff going weird at work." Tommy pitched in. "And then I found David there, invited him out for noodles and coffee, and talked him into helping me figure out what was going on with some creep that was running around in Eli's old costume doing crime; and I know it wasn't Eli, 'cause he was sick for, like, weeks. I apparently got kidnapped by the Eldritch Abomination in the Patriot costume, which I don't remember, but there are a couple months missing, so I guess it happened, and David hunted down the rest of the team 'cept Eli, by doing something involving trajectories. They all followed the Patri-not across the universe, which was nice of them, I really feel the love, and found a bunch of horrifying universes where all of them were evil in the process."

"I got to punch myself in the face." Kate mentioned. "That version was HYDRA, though, so I felt zero guilt over it. And the versions that were basically giant evil hawks with my head, clone by the thousands."

"And there was the giant robot Noh-Varr head." Teddy grinned. "And a _lot _of universes where Noh-Varr decided, for whatever reason, to take over the Earth and turn it into the Capitol of the New Kree Empire."

"And the evil genius Davids." Noh-Varr tossed in.

"And the devil Billy." David added. "Or the version with the Doom mask."

"The version of Loki wearing human skin over his own face, because things aren't creepy enough already." Kate said, almost enjoying herself, now that the horrifying events were so far behind her.

All eyes turned towards America.

"I punched a black hole in the face." She finally offered.

"I remember that." Teddy snorted. "Because physics doesn't apply to you or something."

"It was 'The laws of physics can kiss my ass,'" David quoted from memory.

"Anyway, after all that, we ended up in Mother's pocket dimension again, and David and I got caught while everyone tried to escape." Teddy scratched the back of his head, turning to Kate, who took over.

"We rescued them, after meeting a very, _very_ old friend of Loki's in the dimension we ran to, and led hundreds of evil versions of ourselves into said pocket dimension as a distraction. It came back to bite us later, but it worked at the time." Kate tilted her head. "There was the whole Demiurge revelation, aka: Billy is the Multiverse's magical messiah, capable of rewriting the future, the past, the very laws of the universe, if he puts enough effort into it. Which he hasn't. Yet. Anyway, Teddy left the team for a bit to get his head on straight, but ended up getting caught by Mother due to a version of said very old friend of Loki's, the Patri-not, and a bunch of Noh-Varr's ex-girlfriends."

Noh-Varr didn't bother to hide his wince. Kate wasn't looking anyway. "Anyway, we got the info on Teddy due to some magical alarm Loki set up, and started planning for a final battle. First option was to try aging Loki up to about twenty so that he could have all the magic he needed to pull it off, because Billy had plenty of power but zero control at the time, but that didn't work, and we only found out why later. After that, getting a bit of that Demiurge power and erasing Mother from existence seemed like the only idea left, so we made plans for that, and David called up all the teen heroes we knew to fight the evil alternate versions of us while we took care of Mother and her _personal_ allies."

"At which point, midway through the fight, Loki realized that most of the so-called League of Evil Exes was actually his magic doing some funky thing because he felt guilty for something." Kate shook her head. "So Loki ended up confessing to all the stuff he'd done, un-chaired Teddy, and we got Billy to go all Demiurge and erase her form existence. We punted the evil-us-es back home, we lost the Patri-not, and Loki disappeared. Couple weeks later, we're at a teen hero party, Tommy shows up again because David made out with the Patri-not or something, and apparently Loki made an appearance, talked to David for about five minutes, and left. At which point we lost almost all contact with him."

"And that was when he started running missions for the All-Mother to get his previous crimes erased so that the stories would stop trying to make him evil again." Verity thought it over for a few seconds, wondering how to explain. "Long story short, he got a magic truth sword, recruited me to help him get into the most secure vault in Asgard, and ended up revealing that he was occasionally a she because even gods can be genderfluid. Also made me dinner a few times and ditched the All-Mother for lying to him about something I don't feel comfortable telling you about. Not long after that, our Thor whisked him away for some adventure in a mostly-unknown tenth realm to find some missing sister, tricked a bunch of angels into dying and crashing several billion megatons of exploding warship at an abandoned Asgard, and came home covered in goat hair and telling me that said missing sister might come by to couch-crash someday soon."

"How the _hell_ did you explain it that fast?" Kate stared at Verity in slight amazement.

"I skipped the details, like the Monte Carlo heist, the speed-dating, the fake betrayals, Sigurd and Lorelei, etcetera, etcetera. I also skipped everything that was _too emotionally significant_ to my _best friend_ to tell to near-complete strangers." Verity sent Kate a small glare. "And now, a couple weeks after the thing with the angels, Loki got an invitation to come to the twins' birthday party, and decided to make me her plus one. Any questions?" Verity turned to look at the Avengers, arms crossed and almost daring them to say something.

"Loki's on the ship, isn't he?"

Trust a Stark to figure things out in seconds. Granted, the others didn't seem too surprised by the revelation, but there was suspicion there now, suspicion that hadn't been there earlier.

"Yeah," Verity levelled a look at him. "And she doesn't want to see any of you. Not now, and probably not for a long time yet."

Ah. Thor looked disappointed. Well, too bad. This wasn't his Loki anyway.

Of course, that was when Billy teleported into the room, looking out of breath and slightly panicked.

"America, David, Noh, we need you up there. Not right away, but as soon as you're done here… yeah."

And then he was gone (and so was Tommy).

Verity felt her phone buzz, and looked down to see a message that had apparently taken slightly too long to show up.

_BIG PROBLEM: need America, noh, and david. Mention fusion universe. Two verses, not ours._

And another message, a few seconds later:

_Also don't let Thor up here. I don't want to see alternate versions of any of the Avengers right now, especially him._

Verity slowly turned and held the phone out towards America, the screen facing towards the girl in stars. "You may want to read this."

America glanced down, hardly interested, and then swore, eyes wide. "_¡Mierda!_ This is… I have to go." (1)

She ran from the room, tossing a parting comment as she left. "_¡Boludos!_ Hurry up!" (2)

"Noh? David? Mind telling the rest of the class what's going on before you take a break?"

Noh-Varr was staring at the phone in apprehension. "It means that we are going to be stuck here."

"For?"

"Without America's portals? Months, at least, and that is only if we can get out at all."

Kate paled. They didn't have the resources for that. A few weeks, maybe two months if Billy or Loki had spare supplies packed away in a pocket dimension, but that long was out of the question, especially with this many people.

She turned to the Avengers, even as David and Noh-Varr vacated the room, Verity following them at a more sedate pace, and Tommy speeding out ahead. "So. Looks like we've got some trouble, then."

o.o.o.o.o

**Three Hours Later**

Kate perched herself on the arm of Noh-Varr's chair, eyes flickering over the ship's controls. Everyone had dispersed over the ship, though not a single Avenger was left to themselves; the Young Avengers had too much experience with evil alternate selves to trust that these versions of their mentors and former heroes were indisputably good. As it was, most people were currently in the kitchen/cafeteria/whatever it was, although Barton (not _her_ Clint, her boss and surrogate brother and partner in heroics all wrapped up into one) had opted to stay in the control room and watch Kate and Noh-Varr.

Things with Noh-Varr weren't as awkward as they could have been, honestly. They had an awkward friendship going on now, one where Kate pretended their relationship had never happened, and Noh-Varr avoided bringing it up, just kind of looked despondent and wistful sometimes.

("He doesn't blame you for anything." David had told her, and Kate wasn't quite sure how he knew, but David had his ways. "He misses it, but he's also aware of the fact that it was all his fault.")

("So… what? Are you saying I should forgive him?")

("No, he messed up, and you have every right to hold a grudge; the fact that you let go of it on New Year's actually shows how mature you're being about this. If I'm considered any judge on this, and I probably shouldn't be, you're probably best off doing what you were doing before and pretending it never happened in the first place. 'Just friends,' and all that. You're both old enough to make it work.")

("Maybe.")

Well, they were working on it. Besides, the more stressed a situation made them, the more professional they had to act, and that made them very, very good at getting along.

Kate yawned, bringing her hand up to her mouth and arching her body back far enough for her spine to crack. "Oh, great. What time is it back home, Noh?"

"A little past six in the morning." Noh-Varr offered. "…Kate, how much sleep did you get last night?"

"Not nearly enough." Kate grumbled. "There was an incident with some of Masque's goons that managed to track me back to New York, so I didn't get to bed until about four in the morning, and I was up at seven for work, and then the party, and now this."

"Humans are meant to get at least seven hours of sleep per night, correct?"

"Doesn't always work out that way." Kate pulled her hair back, tying it up high; should have done that hours ago, really. "I've had worse. I can keep going for a while longer. I'm honestly more worried about the ones working on getting us back. Other than David, I'm pretty sure they're all going to work themselves into exhaustion just by expending so much magic."

"Mm." Noh tapped his fingers against a few keys, and Kate paid attention as he did, noting that he was apparently still searching for a signal from civilization. They'd pinpointed their own position, and thus Earth, based on the placement of the surrounding constellations hours ago, but it would take a long time to get there, if it even existed. "Should we ask Tommy to make a coffee run?"

Kate thought it over. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. You ask for some too, if you need it." She twisted her head around. "Barton? What about you?"

"You got Turkish?"

"I believe we do." Noh-Varr answered, knowing the ship's contents far better than Kate did.

"Turkish with two sugars, then." Barton answered, and Kate could _tell_ how forced his relaxed air was. He was tense, tenser than she suspected was usual for him, and different dimension or no, this Hawkeye was similar enough that she could read him. She couldn't read him as easily as a book, maybe, but it was at least as easy as ASL (which she had, for obvious reasons, started learning and gotten _very_ good at; a photographic memory and reflexes came in handy for that sort of thing).

"Alright." Kate said, sending off a text. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Noh-Varr's hand inching towards a certain button, and "No."

"But—"

"Nobody wants to listen to the Ronettes again. Give it some time. People need some variety, yeah?" Noh had played it endlessly during their last mission, and Kate was sure someone would rush in to try to strangle him if he played it agan. Also, that was very romance-y slow dance-y music, and she wasn't ready to be in the same room as Noh-Varr with that sort of thing yet. She nudged him with her elbow. "Besides, what if it bothers Billy and the others?"

Noh tilted his head. "I can soundproof their room if I want to, remember? They're working in the laboratory, and that and the bedrooms can be soundproofed from here."

"Fine, you can play music. _But_…" Kate raised a finger, "you're going to take suggestions from everyone."

"That works." Noh-Varr gestured at the PA button. "If you would?"

"It would be my pleasure." Kate hit the button with a smile on her face. "Hello, all, this is your captain speaking! Noh wants to put on some music, but I said he needed to take suggestions, so if you want to hear something, text one of the Hawkeyes. If you want us to avoid playing in a certain room because it's six AM back home and you're trying to sleep, or because you're busy working on something, you can text us that too. Hawkeye out!"

"Your ending was childish." Noh-Varr informed her.

"Oh, shut up. Need I remind you: short shorts, anime hair, and a _beard_."

"I liked the beard." Noh complained.

"It wasn't terrible, but I liked the clean-shaven look better." And, Kate thought, that was where she was ending that conversation, before it went into awkward territory.

Besides, Barton was staring at them with a calculating look and probably figuring out everything right about now.

"Stark wants AC/DC." The man told them, thankfully reading the situation well enough to understand that a distraction would be appreciated, checking his phone for incoming texts instead. "Steve said he's been looking for a chance to check out Nirvana since someone suggested it to him; Tasha wants some violin stuff she's seen bits and pieces of on YouTube by some chick called Lindsey Stirling; Thor doesn't really have any preferences on this front because he doesn't know Earth music too well, but apparently Jane showed him the Beatles and he's interested in hearing more of them, and I'm just in the mood for country."

Kate groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose and muttering curses to herself even as Noh-Varr began a discussion with Barton, very loudly, about just what kind of country he liked. Gram Parsons? Johnny Cash? The newer pop-country stuff? Noh-Varr didn't much mind Dierks Bentley or Miranda Lambert, but he was particularly fond of Taylor Swift.

She glanced down at her own phone. "Teddy's trying to get some sleep in his and Billy's usual room, but everyone else says they're good to go. Billy's on a musical kick again, so I'd say just toss in some Sound of Music or CATS and we should be good. America says anything other than the Ronettes works; sorry, Noh. Verity wants some instrumental movie soundtracks, something to do with the lyrics not setting off her senses. Tommy's asking for Nightcore, _again_, preferably Daft Punk, and David's saying something about… Linkin Park? Apparently, he's into that sort of thing."

Noh glanced over at her. "Who does that leave? Eli and Loki?"

"And us." Kate flipped through to find the texts she hadn't checked yet. "Eli's asking for Icona Pop and Loki… just got back to me. Emilie Autumn. Because reasons."

"Who…?"

"Emilie Autumn? _Really creepy music_ about mental illness and Victorian Era Insane Asylums and misogyny and stuff. Loki's other option is the soundtrack to Wicked, so I think we'll go with that." Kate didn't really _hate_ the music Loki liked, but there was a time and a place for it, and Kate kept that for her darker days, usually, when the first Central Park incident crept up over her walls and drew her back from everyone around her.

She'd gotten over it. Mostly.

(The music, as creepy as it sometimes was, definitely helped.)

(It probably helped Loki, too, for vastly different reasons.)

"I'll go with Nicki Minaj or Ke$ha. What about you, space boy?"

"Mm… I suppose David Bowie wouldn't be out of place." Noh tossed Kate a look, and she nodded. Bowie was fine.

"Everything entered, hitting a randomizer, and…" Noh-Varr closed his eyes as the music came on.

"_Becky was a beauty from South Alabama, her daddy had a heart like a nine-pound hammer—"_

"Well, at least one of the Hawkeyes gets to enjoy themselves right off the bat." And yet, Kate thought as she watched Noh and Barton bobbing along and mouthing the lyrics and doing little dance moves where they sat, she was kind of happy about it.

They needed a bit of fun on board this disaster.

o.o.o.o.o

**In the dining area:**

The doors, Tony noticed, were quite loud when they were slammed open. They drew attention very well for dramatic entrances.

Unfortunately, the person who entered, while possibly the kind of person that enjoyed dramatic entrances, did not stay there to make some grand speech. Rather, she stalked over to the coffee maker and started grabbing and inspecting large cans of ground coffee beans, muttering to herself all the while. Tony noted the coffee she chose (something called Café Bustelo), and then let his attention drift until she seemed ready to leave again. (3)

"Hey! Chavez, right?"

The girl turned, one eyebrow quirked. "Yeah?"

"No one's bothered to really explain what the whole fusion 'verse thing means." Tony rubbed his hands together. "Now, I can make a couple of guesses just based off of the name, but I'd like to have something a little more concrete on that front, yeah? So, do you mind telling me, or is this some sort of secret thing for you kids to know and us to find out?"

America eyed him up and down for a few seconds, then pulled her phone out. "Gimme a moment."

Tony raised an eyebrow, but sat back to wait for a bit longer.

"Yeah, I know… Yeah… Listen, Stark wants to know more about the fusion 'verse… no shit, Sherlock, but you know I don't take care of explaining things. That's… yeah, that too… he _could_… and yet here _you_ are… fine." She snapped her phone closed (a flip phone? Really? That was _so_ 2006) and turned around to face him again. "Looks like you got lucky. C'mon. I'll take you to the lab."

"And you can't tell me?"

"I can." America shrugged, already turning and leaving. "But they think you can help, so start walking."

o.o.o.o.o

**In the lab:**

Loki wasn't quite what Tony was expecting. A girl, yes, which Tony had assumed based on the shapeshifting mentions and the genderfluid comment and the pronouns, but not nearly as girly as Tony had thought he'd be seeing. Younger, too. Wilder hair. Less manic laughter and megalomania, and more tired textbook flipping and childish frustration.

Loki seemed more like a girl on the eve of her college finals than a god working on interdimensional travel, really.

"So, apparently I'm the first adult welcome up here?" He clapped his hands and rubbed them again as he wandered a bit further into the lab; it was a bit darker than his, but workable.

"Sit down and don't say anything for the next few minutes." Loki didn't look up, just gestured vaguely towards some chairs at a nearby lab table, and Tony… well, Tony shrugged and did as he was asked. Not like he had anything better to do.

America stood behind his shoulder like a security guard, or maybe something closer to a prison warden, and the other two kids in the room sent him intermittent glances; David's expression wasn't something Tony could read, but the other one, probably Billy given that he looked near-identical to the one they'd called Tommy, seemed to be feeling a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.

Good enough.

Finally, Loki finished with whatever she was reading, and then looked over at Tony, fairly grim. "So. Here's the deal. I'll explain what's going on, and you'll provide input and maybe a new angle on what we've got so far. If you're as much of a genius as your counterpart in our dimension, we might shanghai you into maybe fixing the Kirby's warp drives, and if you can do that, maybe even the dimensional jumpers. First, though, I need to explain what's going on.

"Imagine… a pair of soap bubbles, roughly the same size, touching one another. Each of the molecules in the bubble, whether it's in the fluid or in the air inside, is a dimension, an entire universe. But there are some molecules that happen to be part of _both_ bubbles, right where they're touching, where the bubble is warped and flat and stuck to the other. The fused dimensions, the fused _universes_, are those in-between bits. They're part of both multiverses. There are constants within any given multiverse; in ours, there are people that repeat, teams that seem to always form, stories that almost always play out the same way. The fused 'verses contain elements of both multiverses' patterns, and they are, to put it bluntly, _very _difficult to get into from the normal universes. It takes a lot of power, a lot of skill, or both.

"Obviously, there are a lot of 'bubbles,' and it's a bit more complicated due to the fact that the multiverses don't actually physically border each other in any fashion, but it's as good as I can get it right now. The problem is, if we were in fused universe that bordered ours, we'd have a few weeks of work ahead of us at most, especially with America's powers being what they are. I'd do some scans to figure out your universe and take you back there, and then we'd jump home, and everything would be okay. Probably. But you see, this doesn't seem to be bordering on our universe at all. This is a fused universe between two multiverses I've never visited before, which means we have to arrange a jump into a lone universe that borders this one, hop our way out to the other side of whichever multiverse we choose to find a universe that fused to ours, go there, and then go out the other end of _that_ to get to our multiverse, and then find our universes from there. That's three full fused 'verse hops, and a lot of hunting and dimensional travel in between.

"To top it all off, we still can't figure out who sent us here." Loki's voice was getting surprisingly frustrated. "Someone with enough power and skill to send us here, but that I haven't encountered before, probably using magic, and with a motive."

"Power and motive we can mostly figure out." Billy finally spoke, and Tony turned to look at him. "Doom and Mephisto and Kang and Malekith have the power and the grudges, and there are some others that might have done it by accident or for us to learn some lesson, like Hela or Wanda or Odin, or it might have been someone from your universe, but…"

"But there's no reason behind sending people from two wholly unconnected universes, and there isn't much explanation behind why I don't recognize their power." Loki swept her hair back from her face. "And that's making this whole thing _incredibly_ difficult."

Tony scratched at his chin. "Well, I can't really say I've ever dealt with this thing before, but hey! Let's give it a shot. Show me some books and schematics and whatever else you've got, and I'll see if there's anything I can do or say that you haven't already."

"You sure you can get all that done fast enough to actually help?" America asked from behind him.

"I became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics overnight. So probably."

"I've got expert knowledge in almost all forms of magic, and I still can't use it." David warned him.

"Well, good thing I still have my tech, then." Tony sniffed. "One question, though: what if you weren't sent here? What if it wasn't a push, but actually… a pull?"

"There's no magic here, no Asgard, no aliens, nothing that any of us can detect." Loki explained, "There _might_ have been some sort of pantheon here, once, but whatever Asgard there may have been is little more than dust, now."

"And there's no chance anyone survived?"

"It's…" A strange shine entered Loki's eyes. "Actually, anyone capable of hiding from my scans would probably be capable enough to bring us all this far, given enough preparation. It's a possibility. Not a likely one, but it's there for perusal."

"Uh-huh." Tony tapped his fingers against his knee. "What about the other realms? Aren't there nine?"

"From what I can tell, Midgard is the only one left. The others have either decayed or been destroyed."

"And that Tenth Realm that your friend mentioned?"

"…standing, but not a sign of life in it." Loki gnawed on her lip. "That's…actually a good point. The nine realms occasionally exist independently and in different forms in other multiverses, but the Tenth Realm isn't something that should exist here. I'd almost…"

"Almost what?" Billy prompted.

"I'm almost tempted to say that this fused 'verse _was _bonded to ours, once upon a time. The Angels… if they broke free and waged the kind of war that they promised, they may have gone so far as to wrench this universe from the rest of ours, and… and that would have lead to the deaths of all the gods. All the Aesir and Jötunn and demons and the Otherworld and all and sundry of those of born of myth… dead, now, torn from the multiverse that gives life to stories." Loki tilted her head. "Only the most powerful would survive, and even they would be greatly weakened. Midgard would be left alone, because you are all _true_ beings, but… but what of the aliens? And I know for a fact that your particular universe isn't one where the gods are built on stories, so it wasn't even a rule that applied to the entire multiverse, just helped along some of it."

"Might be a side-effect of whatever the other two universes were." Tony pointed out. "And it's still just a theory; the ten realms thing might just be a coincidence."

"No… no, Stark, bringing you in on this was a good idea, but what you've just brought to light with just a few questions… no. I'll need to do some scrying. You look at the books."

o.o.o.o.o

**One hour later:**

"I have a signal!"

Kate spun around from where she'd been talking to Eli and ran up to the controls. The coffee cup in her hand was set carefully to the side, and she looked at the message. "That looks… familiar."

"Definitely Earth-Based, mostly English." Noh-Varr was flicking through the controls. "And… Kate, I don't think these are locals either."

"More dimensional travelers?" Kate bit her lip. The ship was already past the size of the crew it was supposed to have, and they were still trying to figure out the best way to make their supplies stretch out that far.

"The code's too similar to what I've seen various forms of SHIELD use to be anything else. The ship recognizes it. Likewise, the signal's too weak to be most other alien forms in this part of the galaxy, if it's at all like what I've seen before." Noh-Varr typed a few things in, lowering the sounds of singing cats down to something nearly inaudible. "They're requesting a call."

"Put them on hold." Kate said immediately, and pulled her phone out. "Lo? Yeah, we've got a signal, probably more dimensional travelers. Can you… Yeah, that works. I'll stay on the line."

"Should I call the rest of my team up?" Barton asked, fiddling with his phone. "Actually, never mind. I'm doing that anyway."

"Uh-huh." Kate ignored him, mostly. Having the Avengers here would be good, but she needed a reply from Loki first.

"Do we have anything on radar?" Kate asked while they waited, leaning over Noh's shoulder.

"Er… yes." Noh-Varr kept typing. "About six miles away, forward and to the starboard side, slightly down. Much, much larger than the Marvel."

"How much?" Kate demanded, still not quite used enough to Kree to understand the numbers below the radar screen (which was, in its own way, quite strange, being a three-dimensional hologram). "Eli, start calling up the others or something."

"…about the size of a Helicarrier." Noh-Varr answered, scrutinizing the readouts. "Same shape, too."

"That's… probably good news?" It was really more of a question than not, because after everything, they _knew_ better than to think that, just because something or someone was good or bad back home, it was the same everywhere else. "I… wait a sec. Loki? What've you got for me?"

After a few seconds, she blew out a relieved breath. "Okay. Someone's going to know what we're dealing with, then, or at least have some idea of it. Thanks."

"What did she say?" Noh-Varr asked, turning the ship in the direction of the probably-a-Helicarrier, though not urging it to move.

"Whatever it is, it's from the same dimension as the Avengers we picked up. That's the good news."

"And the bad?" Barton asked, and Kate hesitated.

"They're detecting hints of chaos magic on it. Probably an air shield or something, but the point is, it's… probably your dimension's Loki. So, you know, teensy bit of a problem there." Kate shrugged. "Point is, though, now we know what we're dealing with."

"I hope you're right on that one." Barton muttered, and then the door slammed open and people were filing in, and Kate was in the process of shushing them.

"Kate? Should I answer the call?"

"Do it." Kate took a deep breath as the call connected, composing herself. "Hello, this is Kate Bishop, captain of the Marvel. We got your signal, and seem to be the only ones in the area, and if you're willing to talk, so are we."

There was silence on the line for about three seconds, and everyone on board held their breath.

And then?

"This is Nick Fury, former head of SHIELD. Mind explaining why we're picking up the signal from one of our quinjets aboard your shiny little spaceship?"

"Not a lie." Verity whispered, and Kate relaxed, just slightly.

Kate sighed. Well. This was going to go well.

"Hey boss!" Barton called out, a shit-eating grin on his face, and it was all Kate could do not to facepalm, instead simply turning and snapping her hand out and back to her mouth in what she _knew_ was ASL for 'shut up.' Judging by the look on his face, he hadn't expected that. Too bad for him. She'd noticed the hearing aids pretty damn quick, since she knew what to look for, and if that meant she could silently get angry at him, that was even better.

"As you can probably tell, we picked up your team from where they were floating around in space and quickly losing air. Probably your team, anyway." Kate said cheerily, her hands still moving 'round to quietly reprimand Clint, who'd gone from surprised to amused about four seconds in. "Granted, that means we could hold your people hostage if we felt like it, but that would be too much effort and we're not like that. Also, I'm guessing you have a lot more food on hand than we do, and some spare provisions would be helpful on our end, given the timeframe we've got to work with."

"Get me my team and I'll see what I can do." Fury answered, and Kate relaxed a bit. Sure, the voice was way different from what she was used to, but she mostly knew what to expect, now that the deal was in process.

"Quick question," Stark started, and Kate almost groaned in annoyance. "I helped design the new Helicarriers, and I saw the old ones, so I _know_ you only have a few rooms on that thing that can be hermetically sealed. How are you breathing?"

That… was a very good point, and Kate was very curious about the answer herself, now.

"…Thor?" Fury asked, seemingly apropos of nothing, and Kate got a sinking feeling in her gut, knowing what was coming, now.

"I am here. What do you require?"

"You said your brother is dead, so why did I find him sitting in the middle of my main landing strip when I got here?"

Kate bit her lip and slowly turned around. Saying anything right now would not be a good idea.

Signing it, however…

'_I told you so._' She faced Barton, and caught Natasha and David watching her out of the corner of her eye, especially once they turned to look at Barton instead.

"I was under the impression that he was," Thor said, voice not quite trembling.

Unfortunately for her, Barton no longer seemed to be in the mood for the good-natured insults from just a minute earlier.

'_That's the bastard that _[something Kate didn't understand]_ my head during the C-H-I-T-A-U-R-I attack._' The frown on his face was pretty intense.

"Yeah, well, looks like you were wrong. We got him down to the Hulk room, but there's no knowing how long that'll last."

'_I don't know _[she repeated the sign he'd used]. _Well, he probably doesn't have an army this time_.' Kate tried to reassure him. _'And that means we've got more than enough manpower to stop him, especially with a L-O-K-I of our own.'_

"It worked before, did it not? And 'we?' There are others aboard?"

Barton made a face. '_Two L-O-K-I-S? That sounds like a disaster_.'

"Nowhere near a full crew, and most of them shouldn't even be here, but this thing shouldn't exist in the first place, so I'm not placing any bets here."

Kate shrugged. '_One Loki is enough for that._'

"I see."

At that point, she realized that the conversation between Fury and Thor was over, and she spun back around to face the microphone. "Cleared for landing, then?"

"Yeah, you're cleared for landing." Fury said. "And just so I know, how old are you and your crew, Miss… Bishop?"

"Well, I'm twenty-one, Noh's a few months older than me, and Verity's twenty-four, but she's more of a passenger than crew. Everyone else is either under nineteen or a little wibbly-wobbly when it comes to age. Why?" Kate raised an eyebrow, even though the man couldn't see her.

"Aren't you a little young to be travelling space alone?"

"Why, yes. Yes, I am."

o.o.o.o.o

**(1) ¡Mierda! – Shit!**

**(2) ¡Boludos! – Idiots! – According to my research (and please correct me if I'm wrong), this is a somewhat friendly but insulting way to address someone you know in Argentina (basically like calling up a friend and going "Hey, loser!").**

**(3) Café Bustelo – According to a Latino friend of mine, this is the go-to coffee brand for most of the Latino population in the US, or at least New York City, so I figured America would stock some for herself on the Marvel.**

**PS: if my usage/inclusion/description of sign language and Clint Barton's deafness were in any way insulting or ableist, please tell me how, and I will fix it. The same thing goes for how I wrote America, Eli, and David, and if the way I wrote them was in any way racist, given that my experience in writing disabled and POC characters is not extensive.**


End file.
